Yes, by a whisker. He was close, but some of the voids in his resumé vis-à-vis Pelé gave me pause (and others too, no doubt...who had lingering hesitiations regarding the legitimacy of such a claim). Messi needed to do a bit more with Argentina (as a supreme inspirational presence, someone whose genius resonated with his team-mates and pushed them over the edge) to match or overcome the greatest international footballer of all time (as well as one of the greatest club footballers of all time when you look at mid 1950s to late 1960s Santos). And he's done exactly that — winning the 2021 Copa América (as the official Best Player) and the 2022 World Cup (as the official Best Player, again...while establishing all sorts of historically significant records) since that list was made. Framing him as the top forward of all time is much easier now, as some of the missing narrative strings (from back then) can be neatly tied together.
Pelé was notoriously complete, too. High-volume and crunch-time scorer, ridiculously effective ball-carrier, and oh-so intelligent in terms of offensive passing and general link-up play. But Messi is slightly better, less clunkier and more technically refined, in my subjective opinion. Others might disagree and highlight Pelé's dynamism in most phases of the game (somewhat akin to Griezmann from this World Cup) or specific features like devastating heading ability (where he was up there with Sándor Kocsis, Uwe Seeler or Gerd Müller for aerially supreme attackers from the time) to make a stronger case for him, and that's fine — these were two anomalistic forwards (comparable in terms of overall efficaciousness but quite dissimilar from a stylistic perspective). All things considered: Pelé was the Messi of his era, and Messi is the Pelé of his era; two peas in a pod.