NOVEMBER 25 — As far as “I was there” moments are concerned, being in the Nou Camp on Saturday night to witness Lionel Messi break the all-time La Liga goal scoring record was pretty special.
From the moment he moved level with Telmo Zarra on 251 career league goals with a brilliant free-kick midway through the first half of Barcelona’s meeting with Sevilla, there was huge expectation amongst the crowd of nearly 80,000 that Messi would go on to break the record on the same night.
The big moment duly arrived with just over 15 minutes remaining. Neymar surged clear of the Sevilla defence and, knowing Messi was waiting for a chance to register his milestone goal, unselfishly passed the ball rather than shooting, allowing Messi to slide home from inside the six yard box.
By his usual standards it was a notably unspectacular and un-Messi-like way to break a record — a scrambled close range finish with his right foot — but that did nothing to detract from the excitement of the moment and, from the reaction of the crowd, it was immediately obvious that everyone knew they had witnessed something special: the breaking of a record which had stood for nearly 60 years.
The adulation of the crowd and his teammates was inevitable, but I was particularly struck by Messi’s obvious delight at breaking Zarra’s record.
However much players attempt to routinely insist that personal accolades don’t matter and that winning three points for the team is all counts, moments like this betray them reality that personal triumphs are a great motivating factor for the very best of players, such as Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo: they do not merely wish to play on winning teams and win trophies, they also are driven by an unquenchable desire for personal glory, success and recognition.
The most remarkable aspect of Messi’s record is that he has achieved it at the age of just 27. All being well, he should have at least another three or four years at the top with Barcelona, meaning that he is likely to add another hundred goals or so to the record he set this weekend.
As his manager Luis Enrique noted, that should mean he eventually sets a total, which will be close to impossible for anyone ever to break.
There is only one man, of course, who scores with comparable regularity to Messi, and the aforementioned Cristiano Ronaldo is currently on course to break all single-season scoring records, having now registered 20 league goals after just 12 games of the season.
Ronaldo is 56 goals behind Messi on the all-time La Liga scoring chart, but that’s only because he didn’t join the Spanish league until 2009, having previously starred for Manchester United.
In fact, Ronaldo’s record since he moved to Spain has been remarkably similar to Messi’s, with the Argentine having scored 199 league goals compared to Ronaldo’s 197 during that period.
And if you include Ronaldo’s 87 league goals for his other clubs (84 for United in the English Premier League and 3 for Sporting Lisbon, his first club, in Portugal) he has actually scored 31 more league goals than Messi over the course of his career — but then again, he is two years older so had a head start over the Argentine.
Appropriately enough, now they are both on the hunt for another goal-scoring record in this week’s Champions League fixtures, with Barca travelling to Cyprus to face APOEL tonight and Ronaldo’s Real Madrid up against Basel tomorrow.
Messi’s two goals against Ajax in Barca’s last group game moved him dead level with Raul at the top of the Champions League all-time scoring charts with 71 goals, while Ronaldo is just one behind.
Clearly, both Ronaldo and Messi will end up beating Raul’s mark by a considerable distance and the fact that no other current player has scored more than 43 Champions League goals (Didier Drogba) underlines once again just how much better Ronaldo and Messi are than anyone else in the world.
Truly these are two very, very special players and, as I have said before, we should just be grateful for the opportunity to watch them both performing at their peak at the same time rather than spending hours indulging in a fruitless debate over which of them is better.
They are both spectacular players, possessing very different qualities, both personally and professionally, and if you love football you should simply relish every opportunity of watching either of them play.
We may never see their like again.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
