Seven minutes into the game between Inter Miami and Nashville, this Wednesday (18), Spaniard Sergio Reguilón carried the ball to the left wing, crossed into the penalty area and found Lionel Messi. With the same calmness he displayed throughout his victorious run, the 38-year-old Argentine star cleared two markers before finishing low to score the 900th goal of his career.
With 1,142 official games, the Argentine star has an average of 0.78 goals per game.
It took Messi almost three years between his 800th goal, scored on March 23, 2023, for the Argentine national team in a friendly against Panama, and his 900th. Now, Inter Miami’s number 10 is only behind Cristiano Ronaldo in terms of official goals, according to FIFA’s count.
Currently playing for Al-Nassr, in Saudi Arabia, the Portuguese star has 965 goals, committed to his quest for his thousandth goal. Cristiano Ronaldo scored his 900th goal in his 1236th match.
The Argentine star’s career was built, in large part, with the Barcelona shirt, for which he scored 672 goals in 778 games, becoming the player with the most goals scored for a single club.
After leaving the Spanish club, Messi transferred to Paris Saint-Germain, where he had much more modest numbers: 32 goals in 75 games.
With the Inter Miami shirt, he once again had an average higher than the general average of his career, with 0.87 goals per game. He scored 81 times in 93 matches.
To dream of the thousandth goal with this average, the Argentine may need another 114 games. At 38 years old and with an average of around 50 games per season, he could reach the mark if he continues to play until he is 40.
The Argentine continues to delay confirming his participation in this year’s World Cup, but at the end of last year he surprised the football world by extending his contract with Inter until the end of the 2028 season.
The possible mark of 1,000 goals takes into account FIFA’s criteria, which only considers goals scored in official games and therefore disregards some records of stars such as Pelé and Romário.
