The ability to be permanently on the crest of the wave of Leo Messi is undeniable. On Wednesday he returned to Barcelona, after his time with the national team, marking territory with explosive statements. And on Saturday, if he can score a hat trick, he will add another notch to his career to further add to the legend. And is that Leo is just three goals away from becoming the top scorer in football history at a single club.
Until now, that record is held by the legendary Brazilian forward, Edson Arantes do Nascimiento, better known as Pelé, who in the eighteen years (1956/74) that he was at Santos, was able to score 643 goals in 757 official matches. No one, since then, has been able to come close to those numbers in a single club.
Fifty years later, an Argentine from Rosario, who is now in his seventeenth season at Barcelona, is about to achieve it. Right now, Leo adds 640 goals in 741 official matches, so it would not be unreasonable to think that before the end of November, Pelé will finally be stripped of his record.
In fact, the next rival, Atlético de Madrid is one of their favorite victims, with a total of 32 goals scored, only five below the team that has seen the goal the most times, Sevilla, with 37 goals.
It is also true that at this beginning of the year he has not been as prolific as in previous campaigns: in ten official matches, he has 'only' scored five goals, four of them from penalties.
To reach this impressive figure, Messi has distributed his goals as follows: 447 in LaLiga, 118 in the Champions League, 53 in the Copa del Rey, 14 in the Spanish Super Cup, 5 in the Club World Cup and 3 in the European Super Cup.
Where Pelé will still be above is when it comes to counting goals with the clubs and with the national team, where the Brazilian myth has a total of 761 goals for Leo's 711. Of course, in this case, the absolute record is of the Austrian Czech forward Josef Bican, who, between the thirties and forties of the last century, pfirst with Austria and then with Czechoslovakia, and mostly with Slavia Prague, he was able to score 805 goals in total.