Messi Recreates Iconic Goal Against Bayern – His 1,230th Goal Contribution

The legendary Argentine has opened his scoring account for 2025.

It’s been a while since we last heard about Leo Messi — aside from stories about his kids and his new haircut, which makes the 37-year-old look like he’s back in his Barcelona days. But the break across the ocean is finally over. Messi and his Inter Miami teammates played their first match of the year in the CONCACAF Champions Cup.

Their opponent, Sporting Kansas City, hosted the Herons in a freezing 15-degree cold. Spoiler: David Beckham’s club secured victory thanks to a lone goal from their biggest star. The assist came from another former Barcelona player — Sergio Busquets. Nothing unusual about that.

We've seen Messi score goals like this hundreds of times. And yet, every time, his ease of execution amazes. This particular goal against Sporting inevitably brought back memories of another masterpiece — his strike against Bayern Munich in the 2014/15 Champions League semifinal, where he sent Jerome Boateng tumbling with a single move. Not a bad way to kick off 2025, right?

That was Messi’s 851st career goal. For comparison, Cristiano Ronaldo has 924. But there are two key factors — assists and matches played. Messi now has 1,230 goal contributions (goals + assists) in 1,084 matches, while Ronaldo has 1,181 in 1,263 games. That’s 1.13 goal contributions per game versus 0.93 — a significant difference. Naturally, the World Cup winner holds the all-time record in this category.

A thousand career goals is still a long way off, but Messi has at least another year and a half before the World Cup in the USA, Canada, and Mexico. After that, a return to his boyhood club, Newell’s Old Boys, is on the cards — at least, that’s where he promised to finish his career. With penalties and free kicks, he might just limp his way to the mythical three zeros.

But does he even care? Unlike Ronaldo, Messi has never seemed obsessed with records. Still, wouldn’t it be fitting if both legendary rivals broke the 1,000-goal mark? That’s a realm where eternity resides — a place off-limits to mere mortals.

Published by Patrick Jane
21.02.2025