9 incredible Lionel Messi stats after scoring his 700th club goal | OneFootball

Lionel Messi will go down for many as the greatest of all time and his latest record of 700 club career goals further cements his GOAT legacy.

The 35-year-old has now joined an elite list of players to have scored 700 club goals and there could still be plenty to come. Having scored 17 goals for PSG this season, he has already surpassed his total from the previous campaign.

Messi’s greatest-ever goalscoring year came in 2012 when he was able to score 91 goals across the calendar year. Records are meant to be broken, but that is likely to stand the test of time.

The Argentine forward first scored over 20 goals in a season during Barcelona’s 2008–09 campaign as they went on to win a historic treble with Messi as the centrepiece.

During his remaining 12 seasons with Barcelona, Messi always managed to hit at least 20 goals as well as providing an array of assists during that time.

His best stint at Barcelona arguably came under Pep Guardiola, who has always spoken highly of the Argentine.

“Everyone has [an] opinion, but nobody can doubt that he’s there with the greatest of all time,” Guardiola told reporters.

“For me, I’ve said many times, he’s the best. It’s difficult to understand that a player can appear and compete what he has done in the last 50 or 70 years.

“The people who saw Pele, for example, or [Alfredo] Di Stefano or [Diego] Maradona … they can say they’re my favorite because often these opinions are sentimental.

“But, on the other side, if he [Messi] wouldn’t have won the World Cup, the opinion of what he has done for the world of football, in my opinion, of how he is as a player wouldn’t have changed absolutely anything,” Guardiola added.

“For him, it is the final cherry on an incredible career.”

Messi scored his 700th club goal for PSG in Le Classique against Marseille to secure an emphatic 3-0 win for his side. At 35 years old he’s still looking as sharp as ever.

We’ve crunched the numbers and found nine incredible stats about Messi following the 700 club goals he has now scored. Note: Messi’s goals with Barcelona B and Barcelona C have not been counted towards his tally.

– Throughout his club career, Messi has averaged a goal every 98 minutes. He has played 840 matches at club level and so has averaged 0.83 goals per game.

– Messi has scored over 10 goals at club level for 17 consecutive seasons. Between 2009–10 and 2018–19, Messi scored over 40 club goals for 10 consecutive seasons.

– He has scored 75 goals from outside the box in open play and has scored a further 52 of his goals from free-kicks. In the league alone, he has converted 9.1% of the free kicks he has taken.

– Of his 700 goals, 84 of them have come from the penalty spot, meaning that 616 of his club goals have come from open play or free kicks.

– With his latest goal, Messi became just the second player in history to score 700 career club goals, according to IFFHS (International Federation of Football History and Statistics).

– Messi managed to score 700 club goals in 103 fewer matches than it took Cristiano Ronaldo to achieve the same tally.

– Along with scoring 700 club goals, Messi has also produced 299 assists at club level. With that astounding tally, he has averaged a goal contribution every 68.9 minutes.

– He has scored a total of 48 hat-tricks at club level, which all came during his time with Barcelona.

– Messi’s five most common clubs to score against have been Sevilla, Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Athletic Bilbao and Real Madrid. A total of 156 of his goals have come against these five clubs.