Lionel Messi Makes it 400 Goals in La Liga

The five-time Ballon d’Or winner has added yet one more unreachable milestone to his name, after finding the back of the net once in Barcelona’s convincing 3-0 win over minnows Eibar in last night’s La LIga match at the Nou Camp.

It was Messi’s 400th strike in the Spanish league – a feat that no other football player in the top five leagues across Europe have managed to do, online sportsbook news report. Gerd Muller has 365 Bundesliga goals, Jimmy Greaves and Steve Bloomer have 357 and 317 goals, respectively, from the former English First Division, Cristiano Ronaldo has 311 La LIga goals and Dixie Dean has 310 goals to his name from also from the English First Division.

Barcelona boss Ernesto Valverde showered Messi with immense praise after making this achievement, while teammate Luis expressed his pride at playing alongside a player that’s continuously rewriting the history books. Valverde said:

“But 400 is ridiculous. It’s easy to say it, but if you stack (the goals) one after the other… The numbers are stratospheric, incredible […].Messi is an extraordinary player from another galaxy. And it is not just that he is a goalscorer, it’s everything he creates, the goals he gives us, what he generates around him.”

“Obviously, we have to be very proud of Messi because every week he demonstrates how good he is and continues to make history with the club,” stressed Suarez.

From 2008 onwards serious numbers started coming in

Messi joined Barcelona in the summer of 2000 as a 13-year-old kid with immense talent; it took him less than three years to make his first team debut in the 2004/05 season. That same season he scored his first goal for Barcelona, which came in a La Liga match against Albacete – the assist for the wonderful overhead goal was provided by the Brazilian legend Ronaldinho, who greatly helped the young Messi make the transition into the first squad.

Although Messi developed at an astronomical speed as a player over the next few seasons, then Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard never managed to get out more than 20 goals (per season) from the Argentine, per online sportsbooks in Spain. It wasn’t until the Dutchman was replaced by Pep Guardiola as manager of the Nou Camp side ahead of the 2008/09 campaign that Messi turned into a world-class player capable of scoring in virtually every game.

In his first season under Guardiola, Messi found the back of the net 23 times in La Liga and 38 across all competitions. His best-ever season in terms of goalscoring stats (both domestically and overall) occurred in 2011/12, when he scored a jaw-dropping 50 La Liga goals and 73 in total. Since then he has never managed to surpass those numbers, despite coming relatively close several times – in 2012/13, 2014/15 and 2016/17, as he bagged 60, 58 and 54 goals overall, respectively.

On top of the 400 goals scored in the domestic championship until now, Messi also has another 175 goals scored in other competitions – most namely the Champions League, in which his goal tally stands at a whopping 106 strikes in 129 appearances. This brings his total goals scored for Barcelona to 575 in just 659 appearances.