On October 31, star Lionel Messi won his 8th Ballon d’Or in his career. Since the award was created in 1956, only 10 players have won 2 or more Ballons d’Or. Of these, Messi is number 1 with 8 titles, far ahead of second-place Cristiano Ronaldo.
Marca newspaper assessed that Messi’s above achievement is very difficult to break. In addition, the Spanish news site also listed 5 other records that the 36-year-old superstar owns that “cannot be broken”.
91 goals in a calendar year
Scoring 91 goals in a calendar year at the top level of football is unthinkable. Ronaldo and Lewandowski, two other famous super strikers, only reached the milestone of 69 goals/year. In 2023, Haaland led the scoring list, but only had 44 goals.
It would not be surprising if Messi’s record of 91 goals in 2012 stands for many more years to come. The previous record belonged to the legendary Gerd Muller with 85 goals, set in 1972.
82 goals in one season
In the 2011/2012 season, Messi scored a total of 82 goals, including 73 goals for his club. This is another unbelievable record for Ronaldo. Legend Gerd Muller also only scored 67 goals in a season. “King of football” Pele scored 66 goals in the 1957/1958 season.
Star Ronaldo scored the best goals in the 2014/2015 season but only stopped at 66 goals in all competitions.
50 goals in the national championship
For 20 years, the La Liga scoring record in a season was held by Zarra and Hugo Sanchez with 38 goals. With the emergence of Messi and Ronaldo, that record has been continuously broken.
Finally, Messi is the one who has the record with 50 goals in the 2011/2012 season. Ronaldo is also close behind with 48 goals in the 2014/2015 season.
19 consecutive games of scoring
In the 2012/2013 season, Messi played 19 games without a break and scored at least one goal in each game. This streak was only interrupted when Messi suffered an injury. After that, Messi returned and scored in two more consecutive games.
According to Marca, the 2nd and 3rd place on this list are Ronaldo (Portugal) and Ronaldo de Lima (Brazil) with 10 consecutive matches scoring without a break.
474 goals in La Liga
Before Messi’s arrival, the La Liga scoring record belonged to Telmo Zarra with 252 goals. However, Messi has broken this record with 474 goals. Ronaldo has 311 goals but has run out of chances to improve his record as he has not played in Spain for a long time.
In Europe’s top football leagues, the best scorers are far behind Messi. In the Premier League, Alan Shearer leads with 260 goals. In Serie A, the top scorer is Silvio Piola with 274 goals. Gerd Muller leads the Bundesliga with 365 goals. Delio Onnis leads Ligue 1 with 299 goals.
Some other notable records from Messi
In addition to the above achievements, Messi also holds a series of other impressive records. First is the record of 6 times winning the Golden Boot . Haaland and Mbappe are excellent but it is also very difficult to reach this record.
Besides, Messi also holds the record of 106 goals for Argentina, playing the most matches at the World Cup (26 matches) .
In La Liga, Messi holds countless great achievements that no one else can reach: most wins (383 matches), most goals scored (300 matches), most matches with at least 2 goals (133 matches), most matches with at least 3 goals (36 matches)…
