Lionel Messi Makes La Liga History (Again) With Goal Against Real Mallorca
By Tom Gott
Lionel Messi played a starring role in Barcelona's 4-0 win over Real Mallorca on Saturday (no surprise there), racking up two assists and even adding a goal of his own deep into stoppage time.
The Argentine wriggled his way past two defenders before firing home from inside the penalty area to net his 20th goal of the current La Liga season and extend his lead at the top of the goalscoring charts.
20+ - Lionel Messi is the only player to score 20+ goals in 12 consecutive @LaLigaEN seasons:
— OptaJose (@OptaJose) June 13, 2020
✅23 - 08/09
✅34 - 09/10
✅31 - 10/11
✅50 - 11/12
✅46 - 12/13
✅28 - 13/14
✅43 - 14/15
✅26 - 15/16
✅37 - 16/17
✅34 - 17/18
✅36 - 18/19
✅20 - 19/20
Stellar. pic.twitter.com/WREVUTcgc9
As noted by Opta, this is the 12th consecutive season in which Messi has reached the 20-goal mark, and no other player has ever managed to achieve such a feat in La Liga.
Nobody has ever actually come close to matching that. Cristiano Ronaldo managed 20 in each of his nine seasons with Real Madrid (and has done so in his two years with Juventus as well), and the likes of Telmo Zarra, Hugo Sánchez and Raúl all failed to match Messi's level of superhuman consistency.
Messi didn't actually find the back of the net until Barcelona's eighth game of the season. He missed the first four with an injury, struggled in the next two and then sat out the seventh with another injury, but then wasted little time in showcasing his skills.
It took Messi four years to first reach the 20-goal mark, with his first coming in the 23-goal 2008/09 campaign, and the Argentine has never looked back since.
What makes this statistic so crazy is that 20 goals is actually an insult to Messi. He has past 30 goals in eight of those 12 campaigns, reaching 40 in two and even hitting 50 in the ridiculous 2011/12 season.
It took 98 days and 90' + 3' , but for a #Messi goal, we'd wait an eternity. pic.twitter.com/toRk4iJSpS
— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) June 13, 2020
With just ten games remaining, reaching 50 is probably out of reach (even for Messi), but he will hope to hit 30 and make it four consecutive seasons of hitting that landmark.
His outstanding performance led Barcelona to a comfortable win over Mallorca which kept them in the driver's seat in La Liga. They currently sit four points ahead of Real Madrid, who will have the chance to close the gap back to one when they face Eibar on Sunday.