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Barcelona’s Lionel Messi has surpassed Brazilian legend Pelé to become the highest-scoring player for a single club after bringing his tally to 644 on Tuesday.
The record-breaking goal came in the second half of Barça’s 3-0 win in Valladolid, with Messi taking the ball in stride with a clever move from Pedri to finish off in the corner of the net.
Pelé scored 643 competitive goals for Santos during an 18-year stint at the Brazilian club. He left for the New York Cosmos in 1975 and until Messi’s goal, the record has been held ever since.
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Gerd Muller came closer to matching Pele’s club scoring feat. The former German international scored 565 goals for Bayern Munich between 1964 and 1979. The top 5 is completed by Fernando Peyroteo (Sporting CP 1937-49, 544 goals) and Josef Bican (Slavia Prague 1950, 534 goals).
“When I started playing football, I never thought I was going to break any records. Especially not the Pele record that I now have,” Messi wrote on Instagram after Tuesday’s game. “I can only thank everyone who has helped me over the years, my colleagues, my family, my friends and everyone who supports me every day.”
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Alejandro Moreno is impressed by Lionel Messi’s bonding with Pedri and his effort to get behind the defenders.
The only other active player still in the top 10 is Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored 450 goals for Real Madrid. The Juventus forward is 10th behind Jimmy McGrory (Celtic 1922-37, 522 goals), Jimmy Jones (Glenavon 1951-62, 517 goals), Uwe Seeler (Hamburg 1953-72, 507 goals) and Eusebio (Benfica 1961 -75, 473 goals).
Messi’s goals with Barcelona have been distributed over 16 years in the club’s first team. He scored his first professional goal in 2005 against Albacete when he was 17 years old.
Along with Ronaldo, who played for Manchester United before Madrid and Juve, Messi has taken goal scoring to new heights over the past decade. Everyone else in the top 10 has been retired for at least 40 years.
Messi reached his zenith in the 2011-12 season, Pep Guardiola’s last year at the helm of Barcelona, when he scored 73 goals in all competitions. That count ranged between 53 the previous season and 60 the following season.
The Argentine forward has scored more than 50 goals in a season on six occasions, including 58 in 2014-15 when he scored his second hat-trick as a Barça player.
However, it looked like Pelé’s record would hold last summer when Messi pushed to move away from Barcelona after 20 years in Catalonia.
Messi believed that a clause in his contract, which expires in 2021, allowed him to leave for free, but eventually backed down when it became clear that the only way to attempt to invoke the clause would have involved a legal battle with the club.
If he had left, he would have done so with 634 goals for the Barça first team.
Instead, he ended up staying for at least one more season, which has allowed him to surpass Pelé’s club record and continue to make history.
Messi replaced César Rodríguez (232 goals) as Barça’s top scorer in 2012 and surpassed Telmo Zarra (251 league goals) as La Liga’s top scorer in 2014.
In addition to his 644 goals for the Barça senior team, he scored 11 goals for team C and team B as a teenager.
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