How many goals will Messi score in his club career?
Is the 700 mark realistic?
Can Messi be the first to reach 700 goals in club competitions this century? TotalFootball presents a projection of what Lionel Messi’s final goal tally, across all club competitions, could look like.
Author’s note: Base analysis as of Oct 2018. An appendix is added to include 18/19 season. Projection is made until the end of his FCB contract (2021) plus one more potential ‘swansong’ season.
Performance
Goals
As it currently stands, Lionel Messi is on 575 goals from 681 appearances for Barcelona. The bulk (98%) of this is from senior appearances.
If we only consider senior appearances and seasons with more than 10 appearances and exclude the current season (as it is in progress):
- Messi scored 551 goals from 628 appearances over the last 13 (consecutive) seasons
- Giving a median scoring rate of 0.88 goals per appearance
- The peak seems to have arrived around the mid-way point, followed by two smaller peaks later
Last 5 years
Messi’s last 5 seasons are almost identical to his overall median performance. However, in terms of goals and scoring rate, they are both lower than his last 10 season median. This indicates a gradual tapering from his most prolific seasons so far (2011–2013) to the present.
In the last five seasons, Messi has scored at least 41 goals per season. This is consistent with his 10 year minimum return of 38 goals per season.
Factors to consider
Length of career
The biggest driver of goals is Messi’s contract duration with Barcelona and anticipated retirement. Messi is contracted to Barcelona until the end of the 2021 so another three seasons with Barcelona can be assumed. After that, at age 34, we can assume that maybe there will be one “swansong” season (MLS?) before retiring around 35, which for a forward is a long-lived career.
Appearances
As Messi matures, he could most likely take a deeper playmaker role (already tried this season) and therefore score relatively fewer goals. His appearances could also be “prioritized”.
If we look at Cristiano Ronaldo, his Liga appearances and goals gradually reduced over his last three years. But his UCL appearances. UCL goals and the overall scoring rate remained consistent. This counterbalance meant that the net decline in total appearances and goals was very slight. Messi’s appearances and scoring rate have remained consistent so far.
So, even if his appearances gradually taper and are prioritized for UCL, since Barcelona have a great pedigree in European competitions (7 SF in last 11 seasons), we can argue that like Ronaldo, this would only have a very slight impact on Messi’s goal scoring statistics. Also since Messi is a marquee player for Barcelona world football, one can assume that he would play whenever he is fit.
Overall, while appearances have a direct impact on goals scored (you cannot score if you don’t turn up!), in this situation, a number of mitigating factors mean that impact would be minimal.
Estimates
Optimistic: If we extrapolate Messi’s median goal scoring record for another three years, we can expect him to add 135 more goals across all competitions by 2021. But of course, Messi will not score at the median rate. With age, he will slow, get a deeper role, have his minutes managed etc. So this represents a rather fantastical upper limit.
Realistic: If Messi scores at the minimum return of his last ten seasons (38), we can expect him to add 114 more goals. If we factor in a say 10% reduction in goals due to reduced appearances, withdrawn role etc, we get 103 goals.
Conservative: If we take the most conservative scenario and only include the median of 6 lowest returns of his last 13 seasons, we get 83 goals.
Swansong? If we take Messi’s overall median goal rate (45) and assume he scores half of that in his potential swansong season in a less competitive league, we get 22. Co-incidentally this is what the prolific Ibrahimovic scored in MLS this season. So that number can be treated as a constant that we append to his goal-scoring projections.
Projection
So across all our estimates, we can now have a projected range:
- Fantastic scenario: 135 + 22 = 157 more goals
- Realistic — optimistic scenario: 114 + 22 = 136 more goals
- Realistic — conservative scenario: 103 + 22 =125 more goals
- Conservative: 83 + 22 = 105 more goals
Caveats
The projection is based on a number of caveats. It assumes that Messi plays a forward role giving him scoring opportunities, continues to play for 3 years plus a retirement year, retires at 35, maintains fitness and does not have long layoff with injury etc.
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” — Neils Bohr, Nobel laureate in Physics
So which number do we see Messi hitting by the time he retires?
Using the most current statistic, at the time of writing, from Wikipedia, Messi has 575 goals. This is the baseline.
Our realistic scenarios (+125–136 goals) indicate that Messi would reach 700 goals across all club competitions, by the time he hangs his boots.
Conservatively, we can expect him to add 105 goals to reach 680.
As a true great of the game, I’m hoping Messi will reach the 700+ mark. Regardless of the number achieved, he would’ve definitely have set a superhuman benchmark for current and future generations.
APPENDIX — revision for 18/19 season
Updated: Oct 2019
In the 18/19 season, Messi scored 51 goals from 50 appearances. This lifted his median performance, and at the time of writing had 619 club goals of which 607 were from seasons with 10+ senior appearances.
Last season, Messi scored above the extrapolated rate, shifting our projection towards the optimistic side of the spectrum. This season, after missing some games due to injury, Messi has 5 goals from 8 appearances so far. There’s a long way to go but this season (19/20) will be key to our projection. In addition, the impact of Griezmann on Messi’s stats is still to be determined.
However, based on last season’s return for Messi, we can say that our Realistic Projection (conservative scenario) is more within reach.
Accounting for 18/19 season, Messi is slightly ahead of his projected rate. This does not materially alter the model except for increasing confidence in the realistic projection, based on which Messi should reach the 700+ mark.
