Barcelona have announced that record scorer Lionel Messi’s career with the club is over.
A deal had been agreed for the Argentina star to finish his career with the club where he has scored 672 goals in 778 appearances since his debut in 2004, but their financial situation meant the contract could not be signed.
Here we take a statistical look at Messi’s impact on the club.
Record goalscorer
Messi’s goal tally for Barca is the most ever by a player for one club, after he passed Pele’s record of 643 for Santos last season.
He is comfortably LaLiga’s record goalscorer with 474 and is also second all-time in the Champions League, with 120 to his great rival Cristiano Ronaldo’s 134.
Last season’s 30 goals won him an eighth Pichichi trophy, awarded to LaLiga’s top scorer, while he has led the Champions League goal charts six times including 2014-15 when he shared the honour with Ronaldo and Neymar.
He has scored Champions League goals in 16 seasons, matching Ryan Giggs’ record, and unlike the former Manchester United man he has done so in consecutive years dating back to 2005-06.
Messi’s 2011-12 season, when he scored 73 times in 60 games for Barca in all competitions including a league half-century, remains an astonishing high watermark.
He passed 50 in all club competitions on five other occasions, with four more campaigns in the 40s and over 30 in every season since 2008-09.
Trophy haul
Messi won 34 major trophies with Barca, when including domestic and European super cups and the Club World Cup in that definition.
They won LaLiga in 10 of his 17 seasons in the first team, with seven Copa del Rey triumphs – including last season – and four domestic doubles along the way. Seven Supercopa wins boost Messi’s total to 24 honours in Spain – Barca won eight in that time, but he did not play in the two-leg 2005 win over Real Betis.
He added another 10 continental or inter-continental successes, with Barca winning the Champions League in 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2015 and adding both the UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup after the latter three of those.
Messi has also won the Ballon d’Or, awarded to the world’s best player, on six occasions including four in succession from 2009. International honours with Argentina had largely eluded him, save for an Olympic gold medal from 2008, until he led his side to Copa America glory last month.
Hat-tricks and beyond
Messi scored 48 hat-tricks for Barca, including 36 in LaLiga, with another six for Argentina taking him through the half-century mark for his career as a whole.
He scored four goals on six separate occasions – in league games with Valencia, Espanyol, Osasuna and twice against Eibar, plus a Champions League win over Arsenal in 2010.
He also recorded one five-goal haul in Europe, against Bayer Leverkusen in the last 16 second leg in 2012 as Barca won 7-1 and 10-2 on aggregate.
Valencia were on the receiving end of four of Messi’s hat-tricks, with three each against Atletico Madrid, Sevilla, Osasuna, Espanyol and Deportivo La Coruna.
He also scored twice in a Barca game on an additional 137 occasions, with a record 97 of those coming in LaLiga while the most significant recent example was last season’s Copa del Rey final win over Athletic Bilbao.
