Messi is like César

With tonight’s hat-trick against Málaga, the Argentinian star finished his best first half of La Liga in his career (22 goals) and draws level with the record set by César, until now the highest Barça goal scorer at the halfway point in the competition.

Who said that Messi wasn’t on form? The Argentinian genius showed his quality in Málaga tonight and he equalled another record: at the Rosaleda he scored his 15th hat-trick as a Barça players -his fifth this season- to close out the first half of La Liga, in which he scored 22 goals. He’s equalled the historic record set be César, who also scored 22 goals in the 1950/51 season. Simply put, Messi is a goal scoring-machine.

Furthermore, he’s scored four more goals this season than he did last year (at this point in 2010/11 he had 18 goals) and seven more than two years ago (15 goals). Until now, Messi had only scored one goal away from the Camp Nou this season, it was at San Mamés.

In total, this season Messi has scored 36 goals in 32 official matches: 22 in the Liga, 6 in the Champions League, 3 in the Spanish Super Cup, 2 in the Cup, 2 in the Club World Cup and 1 in the European Super Cup.

As a Barça player, he has scored 216 official goals for the team. He’s only 19 adrift from the all-time Club top scoring record, currently held by César (235). (via FCBarcelona.cat)