Barcelona forward Lionel Messi became a father for the first time last month at the age of 25 but parenthood doesn’t appear to have slowed the Argentine down and if anything has sharpened his appetite for goals.
The World Player of the Year surpassed two long-standing records with a La Liga double at Real Betis on Sunday, beating Gerd Mueller’s 40-year-old mark of 85 for a calendar year and overtaking Cesar Rodriguez, who played in the 1940s and 50s, as Barca’s top scorer in the league on 192.
Messi needed 66 games to reach 86 and overhaul Mueller, who scored his goals in 60 matches for Bayern Munich and Germany in 1972, while he has amassed his league tally for Barca in 229 outings since his debut in 2004, compared with 190 goals in 287 matches for Cesar.
He still has two La Liga games and a King’s Cup match to extend his 2012 total and if he keeps going at anything like his current rate his career scoring records are unlikely to be challenged for many, many years.
“I am going to try to score one or two more (before the end of the year) to make it more difficult for anyone who comes after me,” a typically modest Messi joked with reporters after the Betis game.
