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To state that Lionel Messi is a record-breaker would be a gross understatement of his achievements. Over the years, the Barcelona captain has not only broken a myriad of records, but also achieved some unprecedented feats that most footballers can only dream of.
Well, the Argentine has managed to establish so many unique records during his career, that even the Guinness World Records had to take a note of him. He is the proud owner of multiple world records. Unsurprisingly, most of them are in recognition of his legendary goal-scoring prowess.
Guinness World Records is the best selling copyrighted book of all-time and has a collection of a wide range of football records. Check out some of the most unique records held by Premier League players here.
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Also read: 5 Cristiano Ronaldo feats that are in the Guinness World Records
Though it may prove an impossible task to break down La Pulga's top five records, here we take a look at five of his incredible feats that have found a way into the famous Guinness World Records.
#5 Most wins of the European Golden Shoe award - Six
At No.5, we have Messi's most recent feat of winning an unprecedented sixth European Golden Shoe award for the 2018-19 season.
In the previous campaign, Messi enjoyed a great season in front of the goal, scoring 36 times in the Spanish top-flight and finding the back of the net 51 times in total.
It was the sixth time in his career that he had secured 50 goals with the club, a feat that only Ronaldo achieved, who has scored 50 or more goals in six consecutive seasons for Real Madrid between 2010 and 2016.
Messi was the most prolific forward in Europe last season and along with the Golden Shoe, he was also the winner of UEFA Champions League top scorer award.
Apart from making the net bulge himself, he was also the joint top assist maker in the LaLiga alongside Pablo Sarabia, with both of the players picking up 13 assists apiece.
Can he keep up his goal-scoring rate and extend this record to seven trophies by the end of 2019-20 season? Only time will tell.
#4 First player to score more than one hat-trick in a Champions League season
Messi, alongside Ronaldo, holds the record for the most hat-tricks scored in the Champions League, with both of the players taking home the match-ball on eight occasions.
Though a lot of prolific strikers took part in the elite European club competition in the Champions League era and managed to score a hattrick or two, none of them had managed more than one in the same campaign since 1992.
That changed in the 2011-12 season when the Barcelona No.10 scored his second hat-trick for the 2011-12 campaign on 7 March 2012 against Bayer Leverkusen, having already humbled FC Viktoria Plzeň on 1 November 2011.
He also became the first player to score five goals in a single fixture that night as he managed a first-half hat-trick and led the charge in a 7-1 thrashing of the German side.
Had he not scored five goals in the quarter-finals, he would've lost this title to then Bayern Munich striker Mario Gómez, who scored a hat-trick for The Bavarians on 2 November 2011 and another four goals on 13 March 2012, just six days after Messi.
Subsequently, Luiz Adriano in 2014/15 and Ronaldo in 2015/16 would go on to replicate Messi's historic achievement. Ronaldo even went a step further and scored a third hat-trick in the 2015/16 campaign as he went on to score 16 goals that season, which is the second-best tally ever recorded for a campaign.
#3 Youngest player to score 50 goals in the UEFA Champions League
Though Barcelona have failed the win the Champions League for five years now, Messi has remained as reliable as ever, scoring goals like clockwork.
It is not just about the number of goals that he scores, but the rate at which he keeps on adding to his gargantuan tally is absolutely mind-blowing.
Of all the current strikers in the game, he has the best goals-per-game ratio of 0.81, which basically means that he scores a goal every 111 minutes played in the competition.
It is because of the impressive goals-per-game ratio that he owns the distinction of being the youngest player to reach a half-century of goals in the competition at 24 years, 9 months and 10 days.
But he isn't the fastest player to reach the milestone in terms of games played, as he scored his 50th goal in his 66th outing, just four games shy of Manchester United legend Rudd van Nistelrooy.
#2 Most goals scored in a season in the top division of Spanish football
The six-time Pichichi trophy winner has been terrorising the defences across LaLiga for years now. He has hit double-digit figures in 13 consecutive seasons, out of which in the last 11 he has scored at least 20.
He hit a purple patch in the first half of the decade as he managed to score a combined total of 127 goals in the 2010/11, 2011/12 and 2012/13 season.
He broke Ronaldo's record of 40 goals in a single campaign, which he'd set merely a year prior, after breaking the then long-standing records of LaLiga legends Telmo Zarra and Hugo Sanchez, both of whom had scored 38 goals apiece in the 1950/51 and 1989/90 season respectively.
During the 2011-12 La Liga season, Messi scored 50 goals for Barcelona from 37 games. His nearest rival was Real Madrid's Ronaldo who scored 46 goals from 38 games. The Portuguese came close to matching his rival's tally in the 2014/15 season but fell just two goals short as he took home the Pichichi trophy with 48 goals that campaign.
#1 Most football goals scored in a calendar year
In 2012, Messi did something that was thought to be impossible when he shattered Gerd Muller's record of 85 goals in a calendar year, a record that had stood the test of times for 40 years.
Though putting the ball at the back of the net comes naturally to him, his exploits in front of the goal that year were something else.
He became the first player ever to breach the 90-goal barrier in a single calendar year with a tally of 91, of which 79 came with Blaugrana and the remaining 12 with Argentina. In addition to the 91 goals scored in competitive games, Messi scored a further 5 in friendlies over the year.
He scored 13 goals in 12 Champions League matches, five goals in eight Copa del Rey games, two goals in two Supercopa and 59 goals in 38 league appearances with an astounding 1.553 goals per game in LaLiga.
Though he continues to tear through defences like a hot knife through butter, we can conclude that it was a once-in-a-lifetime achievement by the player and one of those records that may never be broken.
