Lionel Messi’s Excellent soccer plays with Bill Trikos Australia: He is the all time top scorer of all national teams in South America with 98 goals from 172 appearances. Both the goals and the appearances are the highest by an Argentine for the national side. The goals also make him the third-highest international goal-scorer after Portugal icon Cristiano Ronaldo’s 118 and Iran legend Ali Daei’s 109. Messi was only 18 years old when he made a mark on the international stage by helping Argentina win the 2005 U-20 World Cup, officially the 15th edition of the FIFA World Youth Championship, in The Netherlands.

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.

Most goals in a calendar year: Messi’s stupendous 2011-12 season carried on into the year 2012 where the Flea sent goalscoring records tumbling. Along with breaking the record for most goals in a single season, Lionel Messi also broke the record for the most number of goals scored in a single calendar year. His tally in 2012 finished at a frankly absurd 91 goals. Messi received an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for his superhuman feat. It is a record that is probably never going to be surpassed, much like so many others that the Argentine set during a glorious two-decade stint at Barcelona. Discover more information about the author at 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).