Another magic night for Messi

Another staggering display from Leo Messi. In the crushing 5-0 victory over Levante on Sunday evening, he not only scored yet another hat-trick, but he also assisted the other two, converted by Luis Suárez and Gerard Piqué. That’s 14 league goals for the Argentinian this season, which becomes 20 if we add the six he’s netted in the Champions League.

That takes him to 50 in all competitions in 2018, including four for Argentina, and means he’s scored a half-century or more in eight of the last nine season. That’s a simply ridiculous stat!

Top in Europe

Those 14 goals are more than any other player in Europe’s traditional ‘big five’ leagues and puts him well on course for what would be a quite extraordinary sixth Golden Shoe. Coupled with his ten assists in La Liga, he is on course for what might even become his best season ever!

43 hat-tricks for Barça

Messi has scored an amazing 43 hat-tricks in a blaugrana shirt (well, actually today it was the opposition that were wearing ‘blaugrana’, but you know what we mean!).

And this was not the first time that he’s scored three goals and given two assists in the same game. He also did it against Almeria in 2010 and Osasuna in 2011.

Lethal double act

Messi (14) and Suárez (11) have scored 25 league goals between them this term. Incredibly, that’s more than sixteen of the other nineteen teams in the competition, including both Atlético and Real Madrid. Only Sevilla (29), Celta (28) and today’s opposition (27) have scored more goals than  the Barça duo.