Since Lionel Messi shot into international limelight at the 2005 FIFA Under-20 World Cup hosted by The Netherlands, he has yet to recede. No little has he also since demonstrated that he has no passion for any other thing than football. He showed it with skill, resilience and, above all, humility. Only the Argentine can explain what he has learnt in football in the last 20 years when his star began to shine. But the world would still believe he is the god of football who has nothing to learn.
No football player in history has had so much to show as prizes as Messi does. Even still, despite having won every prize that football has to offer, Messi, who clocked 38 years on June 24, still appears not done with the pursuit of prizes.
Ordinarily, Messi would not celebrate himself, having rarely even granted interviews all through his remarkable career. But the world could not but celebrate him on his latest age milestone. His wife, Antonela Roccuzzo, sparked off the flurry when she wrote on her Instagram handle: “Happy birthday grumpy old man! Best dad, best partner, best everything!!! How lucky we are to have you! We love you.”
President of Major League Soccer side, Inter Miami, where Messi currently plies his trade, David Beckham, followed suit: “Happy birthday to the greatest. Have the best day to the ultimate professional, player and person,” he wrote. Leaving everyone stunned, Beckham also unveiled an ambitious new stadium project, saying if the construction is completed ahead of schedule, a very important part of the stadium would be named after Messi – the former England international having since always demonstrated his love for Miami’s biggest star.
More tributes soon poured forth in torrents. Suggestive that Messi’s return to Barcelona where he began his career is still being contemplated, the Spanish club weighed in its former star’s joyous mood: “You gave us your heart and you’ll always have ours,” the message said on the club’s Instagram handle, accompanied by iconic images that include his famous header goal against Manchester United in the 2009 Champions League final, the euphoric celebration after the epic comeback against PSG, and his trademark gesture of pointing to the sky as a heartfelt tribute to his grandmother, Celia. Barcelona’s effusive emotion was the least of surprises. Messi spent 21 years at the Catalonia club, arriving in 2000 at just 13 years old and departing in 2021, much against his wish. From 2004 to 2021 when he featured in the first team, he won 35 official titles, including four Champions League trophies and ten La Liga titles, easily making him the club’s most decorated player. Individual awards were a plethora, a seemingly unassailable eight 8 Ballon d’Ors highlighting his greatness and confirming him as the greatest of all time in the reckon of fans and experts.
Initially ranked as “outsider” in the ongoing 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, Inter Miami is trudging on in the competition, thanks to Messi’s inspirational leadership. It matters not that Miami can’t advance in the competition. After all, Messi has shown the world that he can still compete at the highest level despite advancing in age.
The 38 points on Messi’s illustrious career, captured by New York Times on June 24, as relayed below, to commemorate his 38th birthday, best accentuate his greatness and, in fact, put the greatness beyond any debate whatsoever.
1) Messi has scored 672 competitive goals for Barcelona — more than anyone has ever scored for one top-level club. The previous record had been held by Pele, who got 643 for Brazilian side Santos from 1956 to 1974. Like Messi, Pele moved to the United States to play in his mid-thirties (Pele joined the New York Cosmos).
2) Messi has scored 866 goals in his career so far — 672 for Barcelona, 32 for Paris Saint-Germain, 50 for Inter Miami and 112 for Argentina. The breakdown by body part used to score them is left foot: 725; right foot: 109; head: 28; chest: two; hip: one; hand: one. His very own ‘Hand of God’ goal came against Espanyol in June 2007.
3) Messi scored 91 times for club and country in 2012 (in 69 games), which is the most goals ever scored in a calendar year by a top-level player. He surpassed German great Gerd Muller’s total of 85 from 1972.
4) Messi has scored more goals in Europe’s ‘Big Five’ leagues than anyone else in history. His final goal for Paris Saint-Germain, against Strasbourg, in May 2023 was the 496th league goal of his European career, and pushed him past Cristiano Ronaldo’s 495 in Europe’s biggest leagues.
5) Messi has won the Ballon d’Or a record eight times — three more than any other player. He was voted the world’s best in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2021 and 2023.
6) Messi is the only player to win the Golden Ball (awarded to the World Cup’s best player) twice. He did so in 2014 in Brazil, when Argentina lost to Germany in the final, and then again in Qatar in 2022, when he finally achieved his lifetime ambition of winning the competition.
7) Messi has scored 50 or more club goals in a season on six occasions. His highest total is the 73 he got for Barcelona in 2011-12. Despite this, Barca failed to win either La Liga or the Champions League in that campaign (but the club did win the Copa del Rey and the old, far-smaller annual version of the Club World Cup).
8) Messi has scored more goals for Barcelona (672) than the number of votes George W. Bush beat Al Gore by in Florida in the 2000 U.S. Presidential election (537). The Sunshine State’s population at the time was 16 million.
9) Messi moved across the world from Argentina to Barcelona to join the Spanish club’s famed La Masia academy when he was just 13 years old. He made his competitive first-team debut for Barcelona in October 2004 and won 35 trophies before moving to PSG in 2021.
10) Messi has scored 112 goals for Argentina — which makes him one of just three men to reach three figures in international football. The two others are Cristiano Ronaldo for Portugal (138) and Ali Daei for Iran (108).
11) At the 2022 World Cup, Messi scored in the groups, the last 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final, becoming the first player since the tournament introduced a last-16 stage (after the groups) in 1986 to score in every round in a single edition of the competition.
12) Messi has scored eight hat-tricks in the Champions League — more than Raul, Thierry Henry, Wayne Rooney, Mohamed Salah, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Robin van Persie, Ronaldo (the Brazilian one), Romelu Lukaku, Thomas Muller, David Trezeguet, Luis Suarez, Edinson Cavani, Diego Costa, Hernan Crespo, Gonzalo Higuain, Alvaro Morata, Antoine Griezmann, Nicolas Anelka, Leroy Sane, Ciro Immobile, Fernando Torres, Christian Vieri and Diego Forlan combined.
13) As a 10-year-old, Messi was diagnosed with growth hormone deficiency, which prompted fears he would not be tall enough to make it as a footballer. However, he underwent growth hormone treatment and eventually reached a height of 5ft 7in (170cm).
14) That height makes him two inches (five centimetres) shorter than the average American man and nearly two feet shorter than former Miami Heat NBA player Manute Bol (7ft 6in).
15) Messi is one of a handful of players to complete the treble in Europe twice. He won La Liga, Copa del Rey and the Champions League in the 2008-09 season with Barcelona, then did it again in 2014-15. He scored 38 goals in the first of those campaigns and 58 in the second.
16) Messi also has an Olympic gold medal. The Argentinian helped his country win the men’s football tournament in China in 2008 by scoring two goals and started in the final as they beat Nigeria 1-0. Angel Di Maria, who, along with Messi scored in the 2022 World Cup final, netted the only goal of that game.
17) In total, Messi has scored 59 hat-tricks during his career, 48 for Barcelona, one for Inter Miami and 10 for Argentina. His first came as a 19-year-old, against Real Madrid in a 3-3 draw in La Liga in March 2007.
18) Messi accounts for seven per cent of all the goals scored in Barcelona’s men’s first team’s entire history (672 out of 9,606). The Spanish club has existed for 125 years and the Argentinian spent only 17 years playing for the side.
19) Despite scoring 866 goals in his career, Messi has never found the net in the first minute of a match.
20) Messi was sent off on his debut for Argentina. In August 2005, as an 18-year-old, he was shown a red card less than two minutes after coming off the bench against Hungary for elbowing Vilmos Vanczak. In total, he has been dismissed three times in his career (once for Barcelona and twice for Argentina).
21) In his club career, Messi has won 40 trophies (35 at Barcelona, three at Paris Saint-Germain and two at Inter Miami). This works out as a piece of silverware every 22 club appearances.
22) The most goals Messi has scored in a game is five. He has done this twice — for Barcelona against Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League in March 2012 and for Argentina against Estonia in a June 2022 friendly.
23) The triumph over France in the World Cup final in December 2022 was the 26th match Messi has played at the World Cup, surpassing Lothar Matthaus’ record of 25 for West Germany and Germany.
24) Messi playing in that tournament meant he had featured at five World Cups — a record shared with Mexican trio Antonio Carbajal, Rafael Marquez and Andres Guardado, Matthaus and Portugal’s Ronaldo.
25) Messi’s Argentina career has (so far) lasted 15,947 minutes — which is the equivalent of more than 11 whole days. Driving non-stop, you could do the near-6,000 mile round-trip from Miami to Calgary in Canada and back again three times in that period.
26) The Argentinian has scored against 38 different sides in his international career. The nation he has found the net against the most is Bolivia, with 11. None of those goals have come in Bolivia, however.
27) Messi has played 193 times for Argentina, which is both a national record and a South American one. He is fourth on the list of most international appearances by male players.
28) The club he has scored against most often during his career are Spanish side Sevilla with 38.
29) Messi hasn’t always worn the famous No 10 shirt for his country. He has played in both the No 18 and No 19 jerseys for Argentina. His most recent international appearance not wearing No 10 was a friendly against France in February 2009 as the No 18.
30) Messi has scored 27 goals against English clubs in the Champions League — seven more than any other player. The English side he has scored against the most are Arsenal with nine.
31) He has scored 68 free kicks during his career (50 for Barcelona, two for PSG, five for Inter Miami and 11 for Argentina).
32) Messi has played more games at Copa America than anybody else in history, with 39 appearances in the competition. He surpassed the previous record mark set by Sergio Livingstone, the Chilean goalkeeper in the 1940s and 1950s, at the 2024 edition of the tournament.
33) Messi, on his own, almost outscored English club Sunderland during the 2010s. The team from the north-east of England spent eight seasons in the Premier League during that decade.
34) The most consecutive club games Messi has scored in is 10, achieved with Barcelona in the 2012-13 season when he was 25 years old.
35) The most consecutive club games Messi has gone without scoring is 12, in the 2006-07 season at the age of 19. He broke that barren run in spectacular style with a Clasico hat-trick against Madrid.
36) Messi has the most-liked Instagram post ever, with his celebratory photo after winning the 2022 World Cup getting more than 74.6 million likes to date. It has 14 million more likes than the second-most popular Instagram post, which is a photo of an egg.
37) On May 4, 2024, Messi became the first player in MLS history to provide five assists in a match. Playing for Miami against New York Red Bulls at home, the playmaker set up Matias Rojas in the 48th and 62nd minutes and his old Barcelona team-mate Luis Suarez in the 69th, 75th and 81st minutes.
38) Messi has played 1,108 professional games in his career — 778 for Barcelona, 75 for Paris Saint-Germain, 62 for Inter Miami and 193 for Argentina.
From the foregoing, therefore, greatness cannot be better defined.
Published on June 28, 2025
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