Lionel Messi – La Liga top scorer and what’s next for him

60 year old record broken

60 long years, the record was up for grabs and the wait ended finally on Saturday night when Leo Messi, the impeccable striking force from the streets of Rosario, slid down his right foot to tap down one nice little ball from Neymar into the back of the net.

Lionel Messi, has now scored 253 goals in his 259 La Liga matches, thus becoming the top scorer in all time La Liga history. Yesterday, he surpassed Atheltic Bilbao legend Telmo Zarra to reach the milestone. The former record holder , during 1940-1955, netted 251 times in 277 La Liga appearances. But the Argentine ace achieved this extraordinary heights at the age of only 27 years, whereas Zarra left Bilbao when he was 33.

Last night, he opened the scoring for his side at 23rd Minute with one of the finest free-kicks he has ever scored. This was the time when he equalled Zarra’s tally of 251 goals and 78000 spectators at Camp Nou was expecting one more from him to witness the history. Exceeding their expectations, Messi greeted them with two more strikes. The first one came in 72nd minute with a right foot tap-in, thus creating history and then he completed his hat-trick with a swift swing of his left foot.

Zarra played 15 long years for Athletic Bilbao and he still holds the record of most number of hat-tricks in La Liga (22) along with Ronaldo and Di Stefano. Apart from that, the Spanish legendary striker was the top scorer of La Liga in 6 seasons, which is a record yet to be touched. Messi featured in this position 3 times before in 2009-10,2011-12 and 2012-13. Even though his Premiera Liga record had gone to the Argentine maestro, he sits still above all in Copa Del Rey all time list with a tally of 81.

Messi vs Ronaldo

If we care to look who can potentially fade even Messi’s accomplishments, the first name that comes in mind is Cristiano Ronaldo. The Portugese star is now 56 behind Messi and has recorded an impressive more than one goal per game average for Real Madrid. He certainly looked better than Messi this season and could well top the Liga BBVA scorers list at the end of the season. But, the one factor that could well prevent him from clinching the impossible lies down with the age factor. Ronaldo is 2 years older than Messi and barring some terribly accidental scenario, he will surely have less game time in La Liga than the left footed genius.

Messi’s feats

Now to list some of Messi’s amazing records in Spanish soil, the first one will be most number of goals scored in one La Liga season (50 goals).

Then comes most away goals in La Liga history (107), most number of hat-tricks in a season (8) and most consecutive La Liga matches scored (21).

The long list of records never seemed to finish off. He is the youngest to get to the 200 goals mark in Liga BBVA (25 years) and no one has ever scored more than him (21 goals) in El Classico clashes.

In the first half of this month, Messi touched Raul to jointly become the leading scorer in Champions League with 71 goals. In recent future. Messi will surely eye to get past this record. Besides the sure accolade, Messi can try his luck to get his hands on the record of hat-tricks in La Liga. He needs just one to equal and have to compete with Ronaldo to break the record first.