Your complete guide to Lionel Messi’s 100 Champions League goals

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Leo Messi scored his milestone 100th Champions League goal for Barcelona against Chelsea.

He actually scored both his 99th and 100th against the Blues as part of a scintillating display that saw the Blaugrana advance to the quarter-finals. Messi is only the second player to advantage to a century of goals in Europe’s top competition after Cristiano Ronaldo. 

The Portuguese blasted his way to 100 goals last season and currently sits on 117 strikes. Cristiano reached the incredible milestone in 137 games (or 11,848 minutes) at 32 years old. Meanwhile Messi has done it faster, taking “just” 10,090 minutes across 123 games and becoming a centurion at the age of 30.

Messi also reached his century taking over 200 less pops at goal, 524 to the Portuguese’s 790, giving him an impressive shot conversion of 19% (to Cristiano’s 13% at the time he broke the record). His run has been phenomenal, one hundred goals! It can be easy to just look at that and nod in appreciation, but we here at Squawka have peered behind the total to give you a breakdown of Messi’s magical milestone.

The Milestone Goals

Messi scored his first goal in the competition over a decade ago, bagging a goal in Barcelona’s 5-0 thrashing of Panathinaikos in the group stage. It was a scrappy build-up but Messi added a touch of class by chipping it over the keeper before volleying home.

His 50th goal came from the penalty spot against Milan in the 2011/12 quarter-finals (amusingly enough his 51st also came from the spot in that very same game). And then of course his 100th goal came against Chelsea. Will there be a 150th goal? If so, who will it come against? NaijaBet.com

The Quick and the Late

The first Chelsea goal was not just a brilliant table-setter, his 99th in the Champions League, but it was also his fastest ever in the competition coming in the second minute. Pep Guardiola once remarked that Messi doesn’t often score early as he’s figuring out an opponent, but what he does frequently is score late. He’s got a handful of games after the 90 minute mark, but the latest strike was in Donetsk in 2008. With Guardiola’s Barcelona drawing 1-1, Messi received a glorious pass from Xavi and chipped Andriy Pyatov to win Barcelona the game in the 94th minute. It was an ominous sign of things to come.

The Body Parts

Messi scored with both his right and his left against Chelsea, nutmegging poor Thibaut Courtois both times. Whilst he’s made a habit of using his right-foot for some special finishes over the years (including his best ever goal in the competition, against Real Madrid in 2011) he’s only scored 15 times with it over the years. 4 of his Champions League goals have been headers whilst unsurprisingly 81 of his strikes in Europe have come with that magical left-foot of his. NaijaBet.com

The Deadliest Season

Messi’s brace against Chelsea took him onto 6 goals so far this season, but which season was his most lethal? He scored 10 goals in 2014/15 as Barcelona claimed a Treble, but topped that with 11 goals last season. However Messi’s goalscoring peak came at the start of this decade; he bagged 12 goals in 2010/11 and then an incredible 14 in 2011/12. His deadliest season. NaijaBet.com

The Stages

The split between group stage goals and knockout rounds goals is clean and precise for Messi. The Argentine has hammered 60 goals in group games and 40 in the knockout rounds. One wonders how much bigger his totals would have been were it not for the injury that saw him miss most of the 2015/16 group stages before returning and adjusting his role to accommodate a newly ascendant Neymar.

Home or Away

Messi’s brace at the Camp Nou was incredible, but his solitary strike at Stamford Bridge was just as important. Messi has a history of impacting games both at home and on the road. In fact the 60/40 split is nearly replicated in terms of where he scores his goals; with 57 of his strikes coming at the Camp Nou whilst 41 have taken away on the road. The missing two goals? His two efforts in Champions League finals, at Stadio Olimpico (2009) and Wembley (2011).

His National Conquests

Speaking of goals away from the Camp Nou, much is often made of how Messi would fare in other leagues if he ever left Barcelona. Despite the much ballyhooed “rainy night in Stoke” hypothesis, the fact is Messi has routinely been dismantling the best teams from the world’s top leagues. He’s bagged 9 goals against Scottish sides, 12 against Italian teams including the mighty Juve and Milan. He’s bagged 16 against the Bundesliga’s best, remember his spellbinding brace against Bayern Munich in 2015? But his favourite victim? Well it’s the Premier League. He’s blasted 20 goals against English sides, so if he ever did come up against Stoke it probably wouldn’t go well for The Potters. NaijaBet.com

His Favourite Opponents

Messi has never played Stoke, but who exactly are his favourite teams to score against? Well he’s hammered home 7 goals against Leverkusen (5 of those came in one incredible match back in 2012), but above them are Celtic and Milan who have conceded to Messi 8 times each. However his favourite opponent are those memelords Arsenal; he’s smashed 9 goals past the Gunners in all matches against them.

The White Whales

It’s not all success and glory, however. Even though in the last few years Messi has been ridding himself of a few curses (scoring past Petr Cech, Gianluigi Buffon and Chelsea) there remain some players and sides out there that he hasn’t been able to score against.

He’s played Liverpool twice, with Pepe Reina in goal, and failed to score in both games. That was over a decade ago, but it still counts. He’s also played Benfica twice (Artur was in goal) and come out similarly scoreless. And whilst he hammers them domestically, he’s failed to score against Atlético Madrid in 4 Champions League games, 2 of which saw Jan Oblak shut him out. NaijaBet.com

Back in 2009/10, Julio César was in goal for Inter as they faced down the burgeoning juggernaut that was Leo Messi on 3 occasions. Messi failed to score in each game. Both Julio César and the Nerazzurri have since fallen off, and would make for easy pickings now, but they fell off so hard they’ve dropped out of the Champions League picture entirely.

His greatest nemesis, however, has to be the Rubin Kazan legend Sergey Ryzhikov. Back at the start of the decade, Rubin had a good run of success in the Champions League and ended up being surprisingly effective foils to Guardiola’s Barcelona, even beating them at the Camp Nou. As a result Messi has faced Ryzhikov 4 times and failed to score. Will that ever change? Well Rubin are currently mid-table in the Russian Premier League, 14 points off Champions League qualification, so Ryzhikov might hold this record forever. Cherish it, Sergey! NaijaBet.com

The Supporting Cast

Last but not least: the sidekicks. The men who helped make all of Messi’s goalscoring heroics possible. Messi has had many illustrious team-mates over the years, but which have provided him with the most European glory?

Well former team-mates Pedro and Neymar have both set Messi up for 5 Champions League goals, whilst Midfield God Xavi has 6 assists to the Argentine. Luis Suárez moved ahead of Xavi by setting up both of Messi’s goals against Chelsea at the Camp Nou to give him 8 assists. Dani Alves is next with a impressive 9 assists despite being, you know, a full-back. NaijaBet.com

But Messi’s most consistent and quality sidekick in the Champions League is living legend Andrés Iniesta. The Spaniard has been a gliding and glorious companion to Messi’s hocus pocus for over a decade, setting up an incredible 15 goals for the Argentine over the years. They’re a glorious pair, the captain and vice captain of Barcelona, and it will mark the end of an era if Iniesta leaves Barça at season’s end.