Top 5 active penalty-takers in La Liga

Modified Sep 18, 2020 18:28 GMT

Lionel Messi has scored a little over 10% of his La Liga goals from the penalty spot.

#3 Iago Aspas (Celta Vigo) - 22 penalties

33-year-old Celta Vigo striker Iago Aspas' 22 successful penalties put him in joint-fourth place in the list of all-time penalty-takers in La Liga history. Interestingly, the Spaniard has scored a quarter of his La Liga goals (91) from the penalty spot.

Aspas converted five of his seven La Liga spot-kicks last season, missing against Real Valladolid and Eibar as Vigo drew goalless against the former and lost 0-2 to the latter.

#2 Dani Parejo (Villareal) - 26 penalties

Dani Parejo, who has joined Villareal after a successful nine-season stint with Valencia, has scored 26 (out of 32) penalties in the La Liga.

Last season, Parejo converted five of his six La Liga spot-kicks for Valencia who finished a lowly ninth in the league table.

#1 Lionel Messi (Barcelona) - 57 penalties

Not surprisingly, it is all-time La Liga top-scorer Lionel Messi who has the most penalties (57) of any active player in the competition.

The diminutive Argentinian, who decided to stay on at Barcelona after expressing his wish to leave the club at the end of the season, needs four more successful spot-kicks in the La Liga to go level with all-time record-scorer Cristiano Ronaldo (61).

Last season, Messi scored all five of his La Liga spot-kicks en route to scoring 25 goals in the competition. However, the Barcelona captain, despite his fabulous goal-scoring prowess, has a rather underwhelming penaltyconversion rate in the Spanish top-flight.

The 33-year-old has missed as many as 12 penalties in the La Liga, with four of them coming in the 2015-16 edition of the competition. In fact, Messi has missed a La Liga penalty in each of the last six seasons prior to 2019-20.

Edited by S Chowdhury