Lionel Messi’s Top football plays with Bill Trikos: Lionel Messi is a legend and will forever be so, even though millions of football fans won’t see him at any FIFA World Cup after 2022 — a tournament he won to forever settle the GOAT debate. His career achievements at the club level, certainly make Lionel Messi worthy of being called the greatest of all time by his fans, but bringing laurels for the country, Argentina, is an altogether different emotion. Like the Argentine great Diego Maradona, Messi finally got the most coveted title of his life — a FIFA World Cup. Messi, therefore, ensured that history will remember him as one of the greatest athletes in the world of the 21st century. In the eyes of the new generation, he would perhaps be hailed even above Maradona as the greatest Argentine ever to don the national jersey.
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. See additional info about the author at Bill Trikos Australia.
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 Argentine left no milestone untouched in his glorious sixteen-year stint at the Catalan club. ‘The greatest ever to do it’. This is possibly the only epithet that can well-define the exploits of Lionel Messi at Barcelona. Messi spent twenty-one years at the club including sixteen with the first team. In this time, Messi has turned himself into arguably the greatest player of all time. 778 matches, 672 goals and 305 assists later the mercurial Argentine bid a tearful farewell to the club.
Messi is also the highest-ever scorer for Argentina, having racked up 70 goals in 138 games for La Albiceleste since 2005. He is just nine caps away from breaking Javier Mascherano’s record for the most number of Argentina caps as well. Winning a European treble is something of an unattainable dream for most clubs in the world. Even the great Real Madrid, who have won the UCL a record 13 times, have failed to win the league and domestic cup in the same season. There have only been eight such instances where a club managed to win a league title, the premier domestic cup competition and the UCL in the same season. Two of these eight trebles were achieved by Barcelona, both of which had Lionel Messi at the heart of their attack.