📊 Opta's stats of the decade have thrown up a few surprises | OneFootball

God bless the good people at Opta.

Not only do they provide us football fans with brilliant tidbits on a daily basis, they’ve also been trawling through their archives to bring us the very best statistics from the past decade.

Best free-kick taker

As if we needed more proof, Lionel Messi is officially the king of free kicks.

Opta are going stat crazy with another decade coming to a close, and Messi has scored 34 direct free kicks – 14 more than nearest rival Cristiano Ronaldo (20).

The man is an absolute joke.

Best penalty-taker

Lionel Messi? Nope. Cristiano Ronaldo? Nowhere near. Frank Lampard? Not a hope in hell.

Opta have been firing out some ridiculous stats on this, the final day of the decade.

And one which took us all at Onefootball Towers by surprise was the name of the 2010s very best penalty taker.

The man who didn’t miss a single spot kick wasn’t one of the Ballon d’Or botherers.

No, it was Liverpool and Monaco’s own Fabinho.

Thinking inside the box

Fox in the box extraordinaire and most handsome man in football, Fernando Llorente saw out the decade as the owner of this astounding stat.