Lionel Messi is Number 3 in 90min’s Top 50 Greatest Footballers of All Time Series
Yep. We’re going to try and define Lionel Messi’s career in six moments. Seven achievements. Lionel Messi, the man with a list of honours longer than Slenderman’s arms.
So yeah, there’s going to be one or two things that don’t make it here.
Olympic Gold 2008
Still Messi’s only semi-senior international honour, he spearheaded a team including Pablo Zabaleta, Angel Di Maria, Javier Mascherano, Fernando Gago, Juan Román Riquelme and Sergio Aguero, with Ever Banega and Ezequiel Lavezzi coming off the bench and oh my god how did this team only win by one goal in the final?!
Nigeria’s centre-forward was Peter Odemwingie! The man to his right – nominally a striker – is now 32 years old and has scored 44 club goals in total! Can you retroactively take an Olympic gold medal off someone for not winning by enough?
Just All of 2009, All of it
La Liga. Copa del Rey. Champions League. Spanish Super Cup. UEFA Super Cup. World Club Cup. First Ballon d’Or. First UEFA Club Player of the Year. First La Liga Player of the Year.
It feels ridiculous to call 2008/09 Messi’s breakout season – he’d already scored 30-odd goals for Barcelona and played topside of 100 games for the club. But then he was just another phenomenon, another brilliant young player who ‘could be‘. In 2009, he was.
He also, in that 2009 Champions League final against Manchester United, scored a goal that he since called his best ever (for its ‘importance’). Who’s arguing?
Semi Final vs Real Madrid, 2011
On the way to Messi’s third Champions League title as a Barcelona player (and his second scoring final), Barça came up against Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid. The Argentine had been on a handy run against Los Blancos, scoring in four of the previous six league Clasicos, but Mourinho’s side had shown steel just a fortnight before to end a five-match Barça winning run.
A scrappy game at the Bernabeu boiled over on the hour mark, with Real centre-back Pepe sent off and Mourinho sent to follow him for his own protestations. That flash-point is what the match may be best remembered for, but Messi opened the scoring with a neat finish before producing some of his very, very best.
To kill the tie against his great rivals, he skipped past four players on a drive into the box before finishing deftly on his weaker right foot. Given what had come before, the goal is sometimes forgotten. It really shouldn’t be.
The Half-Century
There have been 56 winners of Spain’s Pichichi trophy and, until the 2010s, nobody had done it with a 40-goal season. Cristiano Ronaldo raised the bar with 41 goals in 2010/11, and then Messi…scored 50 the very next season to put the record on a very, very high shelf.
If he hadn’t been suspended for one game against a Sporting Gijon team who conceded a very nice 69 goals that season, if could’ve been even more. He could’ve added to his eight hat-tricks, which included two four-goal hauls. If he’d played more than half an hour against La Real in just the second game of the season (he didn’t score), who knows?
50 goals. 50 league goals in a season. Christ.
La Liga’s All-Time Leader
“Yeah, alright, Messi’s the all-time leading scorer in La Liga. Obviously. He’s been in the league since he was a teenager and he’s 32 now, he should be up there.”
Yeah but he broke the record when he was 27 years and five months. Now he’s nearly 200 ahead of the bloke whose record he beat. And he’s more than 100 ahead of anyone since.
“Oh, right. Jesus.”
Sixth Ballon d’Or
Defining moments have come more rarely for Messi in recent years. There have been finals, but not the most major ones. He hasn’t played in a Champions League final since 2015, and the World Cup…well, we don’t talk about the World Cup.
There was the PSG remontada, but that was – honestly – more of a Neymar night, besides which a Massimiliano Allegri masterclass in the next round rendered the whole thing hollow.
However. For the man who measures himself against only one other, winning the 2019 Ballon d’Or after a four-year break, taking him back above Ronaldo (who, at 35, is unlikely to win another) and getting a little reminder from the world that he’s still loved? Yeah. That was nice.
For more from Chris Deeley, follow him on Twitter at @ThatChris1209!
90min’s ‘Top 50 Greatest Footballers of All Time’ can be found here.
Number 50: Luka Modric
Number 49: John Charles
Number 48: Hugo Sanchez
Number 47: Jairzinho
Number 46: Omar Sivori
Number 45: Paolo Rossi
Number 44: Paul Breitner
Number 43: George Weah
Number 42: Kaka
Number 41: Lev Yashin
Number 40: Gunnar Nordahl
Number 39: Kevin Keegan
Number 38: Hristo Stoichkov
Number 37: Gianluigi Buffon
Number 36: Johan Neeskens
Number 35: Xavi Hernandez
Number 34: Luis Suarez
Number 33: Karl-Heinz Rummenigge
Number 32: Andres Iniesta
Number 31: Rivelino
Number 30: Bobby Moore
Number 29: Socrates
Number 28: Sandor Kocsis
Number 27: Lothar Matthaus
Number 26: Ronaldinho
Number 25: Ruud Gullit
Number 24: Bobby Charlton
Number 23: Giuseppe Meazza
Number 22: Raymond Kopa
Number 21: Romario
Number 20: Eusebio
Number 19: Marco van Basten
Number 18: George Best
Number 17: Zico
Number 16: Franco Baresi
Number 15: Cristiano Ronaldo
Number 14: Ferenc Puskas
Number 13: Paolo Maldini
Number 12: Gerd Müller
Number 11: Mané Garrincha
Number 10: Alfredo Di Stefano
Number 9: Roberto Baggio
Number 8: Michel Platini
Number 7: Ronaldo
Number 6: Zinedine Zidane
Number 5: Johan Cruyff
Number 4: ?Franz Beckenbauer
Let’
