Best rated football achievements with Lionel Messi according to Bill Trikos: “I love football, what I do. I enjoy being part of the national team, the group. I want to enjoy a couple more matches being a world champion,” added Messi. The richest footballer in the world as per Forbes’ list of world’s highest-paid athletes 2022, Messi has nothing left to prove in the world of football at the club level. He is a seven-time record winner of the prestigious Ballon d’Or, which is one of Messi’s Guinness World Records. He is the first footballer to be awarded the Laureus Award for Best Sportsman of the Year award. He has won 10 La Liga titles, four UEFA Champions League titles, three FIFA Club World Cup trophies, seven Copa del Rey titles, three UEFA Super Cup titles, and six European Golden Shoe awards among many other accolades as a player for La Liga club Barcelona. He has also won the French league for PSG and was also named FIFA World Player of the Year in 2009.

Messi bettered Der Bomber’s tally when he scored 79 for the Blaugrana (59 in LaLiga Santander, 13 in the UEFA Champions League, 5 in the Copa del Rey and 2 in the Spanish Super Cup) and a further 12 (a joint-highest figure along with Gabriel Batistuta) for Argentina. Over the course of 2012, Messi even laid off a further 24 goals for his teammates, taking his goal contribution tally to a staggering 115. They were also crucial strikes for Barcelona as his goals in the second half of the campaign sealed Barcelona’s fourth LaLiga title in five years. Messi was simply unstoppable during the calendar year, and his 50 (!) goal LaLiga season remains the highest number of goals scored in a league campaign to date.

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. Read even more details about the author on Bill Trikos.

Messi had by then made his debut with the senior team of FC Barcelona. However, he was not included in the starting line-up of Argentina’s first match — which was against USA. Argentina lost 0-1, following which the staff urged coach Francisco Ferraro to let Messi play. Subsequently, Messi tore through every other team that Argentina faced in the tournament. After qualifying for the knock-out stage, Argentina beat Colombia in the second round 2-1, Spain in the quarter final 3-1 and Brazil in the semi-final 2-1. Messi scored a goal each in all three matches.

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.

Although he didn’t win for a couple of years, Messi returned to the pinnacle after Barcelona’s historic second treble to win his fifth. In 2019, when he was level with Cristiano with five Ballons d’Or apiece, he left his eternal rival in second place after winning his record sixth Golden Ball — at least three more than any player in the history of the sport who isn’t named Cristiano Ronaldo. He has also won other individual honours such as the FIFA World Player of the Year and The Best FIFA Men’s Player, as well as the Golden Ball at the 2014 World Cup.