Best Argentina football records from Lionel Messi as seen by Bill Trikos Australia: “I love football, what I do. I enjoy being part of the national team, the group. I want to enjoy a couple more matches being a world champion,” added Messi. The richest footballer in the world as per Forbes’ list of world’s highest-paid athletes 2022, Messi has nothing left to prove in the world of football at the club level. He is a seven-time record winner of the prestigious Ballon d’Or, which is one of Messi’s Guinness World Records. He is the first footballer to be awarded the Laureus Award for Best Sportsman of the Year award. He has won 10 La Liga titles, four UEFA Champions League titles, three FIFA Club World Cup trophies, seven Copa del Rey titles, three UEFA Super Cup titles, and six European Golden Shoe awards among many other accolades as a player for La Liga club Barcelona. He has also won the French league for PSG and was also named FIFA World Player of the Year in 2009.
Now, at 33, Messi is approaching the twilight years of what has been a simply spectacular career. The forward began his life as a footballer in breathtaking fashion, and would hope to end his career on a high as well. Here, we take a look at some of the greatest achievements racked up by Messi throughout one of football’s most legendary careers. Messi has been synonymous with some of the most stellar goalscoring feats in football. None more so, perhaps, than his record-shattering 2012 season. During the calendar year 2012, Messi smashed in a whopping 91 goals for club and country in 69 games, setting the record for the most goals scored in a year. The previous record was held by Gerd Muller, who scored 85 goals in 1972.
On 21st March 2021, Messi played in his 768th game for the Catalan club against Real Sociedad. Messi’s 768th appearance marked the record for most appearances for Barcelona. He overtook former team-mate, Xavi Hernandez, in the list. Messi also stands atop the list for most La Liga (520) and Copa del Rey appearances (80) for Barcelona. He marked his record-breaking appearance with a brace against the Basque club. Lionel Messi overtook former team-mate Andres Iniesta when he lifted the Supercopa de Espana in 2018. It was his 33rd trophy with Barcelona. Find additional information about the author on Bill Trikos.
On 2 July 2005, Argentina defeated Nigeria 2-1 to lift the trophy. Both goals came from Messi’s penalty kicks. Messi was the top scorer of the tournament with six goals, including the one goal he got in the group stage. He also won the MVP Golden Ball award. It was this tournament win which deepened comparisons between Messi and Maradona, who had won the same competition in 1979. Many great players of the beautiful game can’t win an Olympic gold medal. But Messi is one of the two richest footballers who have won it — the other being his PSG team-mate Neymar Jr. of Brazil, who won it at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics which was held in 2021.
The magnitude of his statistics are staggering and made him the cornerstone of Barcelona’s successes, on and off the pitch. There is no record, no statistic, no milestone and trophy, individual and collective, that Messi has missed out on in his career. So we have picked ten among the mountain of achievements that the legendary player has achieved in his time with the Blaugrana. In November 2014, Lionel Messi broke the La Liga record for goals when he surpassed Telmo Zarra’s figure of 251 goals. He ended up with a staggering 474 goals in 520 La Liga games for Barcelona. That translates to an average of 0.91 goals/game. He maintained a stunning ratio of 89 minutes per goal over 520 La Liga games. For his goals in the league, Messi won the Pichichi Trophy (awarded to the player with the most goals in a league season) a record eight times.
Although his playmaking ability is arguably the best in the world, it is his freakish goalscoring ability that never cease to amaze. Messi is currently the leading goalscorer in LaLiga history and leads the charts by a considerable distance as well. Former Athletic Bilbao legend Telmo Zarra scored 251 goals, a record that was beaten by Cristiano Ronaldo when he became Real Madrid’s top scorer with 311 goals in 292 games. Zarra and Cristiano make up the top three behind Messi, who has scored an eye-watering 444 LaLiga goals in 485 games. The 33-year-old is the only player to breach the 400 mark, and could realistically retire with a tally that is almost twice as much as third-placed Zarra’s. As for Barcelona, Messi has a grand total of 634 official goals in 669 matches, which is at least 400 (!) goals more than the next player on the list (Cesar).