As a 13-year old footballer with aspirations, 18- years ago, Lionel Messi joined Barcelona.
Often considered the best player in the world and regarded by many as one of the greatest players of all time Messi has won a record-tying five Ballon d’Or awards.
The record is tied with his footballing nemesis Christiano Ronaldo who relocated to Serie A in the summer. Messi won four f his five Ballons d’Or consecutively. He also has five European Golden Shoes and has spent his entire professional career with Barcelona winning club record 32 trophies.
Nine La Liga titles, four UEFA Champions League titles and six Copas del Rey are all in his trophy cabinet. Messi holds the records for most goals scored in La Liga standing at 404, a La Liga season (50), a club football season in Europe (73), a calendar year (91), El Clásico (26), most hat-tricks in the UEFA Champions League (8), as well as those for most assists in La Liga (162) and the Copa América (11). He has scored over 670 senior career goals for club and country.
He scored his 50th Copa del Rey goal, on January 30th, and also assisted another in a 6–1 home win over Sevilla in the second leg of the quarter-finals, which allowed Barcelona to advance to the semi-finals 6–3 on aggregate.
Messi scored his 400th La Liga goal on January 13th in his 435th league appearance in a 3–0 home win over Eibar, becoming the first player ever to manage this tally in just one of Europe’s top five leagues.
