Years have passed by, and yet these records of Lionel Messi leave us in awe every single time we recall them
June 24 is undoubtedly one of the most memorable dates in the world of football. After all, 37 years ago, Lionel Messi made his way into the way, and at the age of 18 in 2005, he scored his first goal for Football Club Barcelona. The rest, as we know, is history.
To celebrate Lionel Messi’s birthday with his millions of fans, we have compiled a list of Messi records that are unlikely to be broken for a long time. Years have passed by, and yet these records of Lionel Messi leave us in awe every single time we recall them.
Seven Ballon d’Ors?! We still wonder how he managed to get so many despite competing with Cristiano Ronaldo for two long decades. Imagine had there been no Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi would have probably had 12 Ballon d’Ors—who knows? Messi won his first d’Or in 2009, whereas his seventh award was achieved in 2023 for leading the Argentina team to the FIFA World Cup title.
Lionel Messi’s 94 goals in a calendar year are simply out of this world. The only active players who make the top 10 are Robert Lewandowski, who scored 69 goals in 2021; CR7, who scored 69 in 2013; and Harry Kane, who scored 56 goals in 2017. Given all three mentioned players are prime, no other young active players are in contention to break Messi’s records—not even Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland.
The former No. 10 of FC Barcelona spent 18 years at Nou Camp, playing 779 matches. In 779 games, Messi scored 672 goals. When it comes to active players, even Cristiano Ronaldo’s record is 450 goals for his former club, Real Madrid.
In the present era, Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland are considered the two goal-scoring machines, but Mbappe has recently joined Madrid at the age of 25 from Ligue 1 to La Liga, which is a much tougher transition. On the other hand, scoring so many goals for Haaland in the Premier League will never be an easy task.
In his 18 years of stay at Nou Camp, Lionel Messi struck fear in the hearts of Madrid fans when it came to El Classico, the match between arch-rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona. Messi scored 26 El Classico goals, eight more than second-placed Cristiano Ronaldo. No active player at the moment makes it to the top ten of the list. In short, this record is also likely to remain intact for at least a decade or two.
So far, Lionel Messi has played 181 matches for Argentina, scoring 106 goals. Only Di Maria comes close with 139 matches, but he is set to retire from international football after the 2024 Copa America concludes. No other active young generation player is present in the top 20. Therefore, even this record is likely to stay intact for a long time.
