SATURDAY evening sees another El Clasico, after a long wait of three days since the previous one. Lionel Messi didn’t score in the Copa del Rey tie on Wednesday evening but the man people believe will be the division’s breakout star, now ITV have rights to some of La Liga’s games, surely has enough in his locker to add more chapters to his big book of records. Here is just a tiny taste.
Messi has scored 489 goals for Barcelona in the 2010s, putting him exactly level with Sunderland in the same time period. This is slightly unfair on Messi as he has not had the chance to play in League One.
What were you doing in 2008-09? If you were Lionel Messi you were scoring what seemed to contemporaries like a respectable total of 23 league goals. As it stands, that is the last season he ended with fewer than 25, a run that will extend to 2019-20 at least.
Don’t put Messi on the bench, right? Wrong. His total of 22 La Liga goals from the bench in the 21st century is more than any other player in the competition. He’s a luxury Jermain Defoe.
Messi’s recent hat-trick against Sevilla was his 44th for Barcelona, meaning he has scored more hat-tricks than Shola Ameobi scored Premier League goals. The real quiz.
You’ll be shaken to learn that Messi’s total of 26 goals in Clasicos is a record. That means he has scored as many goals vs Real Madrid as Arsenal, Chelsea, Derby (laugh it up but the Rams scored five goals in two games against Real), Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham have combined.
The top scoring player for a single club in the Champions League, Messi’s total of 106 goals is as many as Tottenham Hotspur, Thierry Henry and Razvan Rat combined. The big three.
Despite being only 22 months older than Tom Cleverley, Lionel Messi has scored 556 more club goals than the Watford man. If Messi never scores again, Cleverley will need to average 0.71 goals per day, every day of the year, to draw level by the time he reaches the age Messi is now. Experts consider it unlikely.
Even a master has to start somewhere. Lionel Messi’s first hat-trick (against Real Madrid no less), came just 24 days after Preston stormed off the set of Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
Meanwhile, Messi’s league debut in October 2004 is closer to Paul Gascoigne’s yellow card against West Germany at the 1990 World Cup than it is to now.
A noted hatchet man, in the 2010-11 Champions League campaign, Messi conceded as many fouls (17) as Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney and Paul Scholes combined.
In January 2015 Messi emulated Jay Demerit for Watford vs Portsmouth in November 2006 when he scored a goal and conceded a penalty in the same game.
Messi bestriding games like a colossus hasn’t always been the case. Back in 2007, when Liverpool became the first and so far only English side to win at the Nou Camp in the Champions League, Messi had fewer touches of the ball than Steve Finnan. Finnan also scored at Feethams, something the Barcelona star can never emulate.
A £10 bet on Messi to score twice in El Clasico returns £65.00
