Lionel Messi needs no introduction anywhere in the world. The 31-year-old has raised the bar high throughout his career, and he alongside Ronaldo dominated the footballing landscape, setting numerous goalscoring records along the way.
With 5 European Golden Boots to his name, the Argentine leads the way for most numbers won in the history of the game. He also holds the record for highest number of goals scored in a single calendar year, with his 91 goals in 2012 breaking Gerd Muller's long-standing record.
The Barcelona forward also holds the record for most goals in a single league campaign, with 50 goals in 2012. Messi was the pichichi winner with his 34 goals last season, and that was enough to guide Barcelona to the league title and win him LaLiga's Golden Boot for the fifth time in his career.
Due to his status as one of the greatest players of all time, coupled with the fact that Barcelona are the favourites to retain the league title they won last season makes Lionel Messi one of the top contenders for the LaLiga Golden Boot.
However, some factors might see Lionel Messi struggle to maintain his usual high standards.
Here are five reasons why Lionel Messi might not win the LaLiga Golden Boot this season.
#5 His withdrawn role
Lionel Messi is undoubtedly one of the greatest goalscorers in history. His supreme passing abilities also means he can function as a premier playmaker, with his uncanny ability to pick out teammates with pinpoint passes proving crucial to most of Barcelona's goals.
Messi's evolution in his game has seen him deployed in a deep position to influence proceedings from midfield. His proficiency in wriggling out of tight spaces to create opportunities for himself and teammates means he excels in this position, as he can hurt oppositions with his defence-splitting passes or by running into space himself.
This adaptation in his game has unsurprisingly seen Messi's impact in the final third take a hit in terms of goalscoring returns, failing to score 40 league goals in each of the last three seasons, compared to earlier in his career when he hit that mark three times between 2012 and 2015, including his record-breaking haul of 50 in the 2011/2012 season.
Messi being deployed as a deep lying playmaker aids mightily in boosting Barcelona's creativity. However, it comes at a cost, and the reduction in his goal returns could see Lionel Messi struggle to retain the Golden Boot which he won last season.
#4 His quest for European redemption
While Barcelona have undoubtedly been the most dominant team in LaLiga in recent years, they have foundered on the continent. They have been eliminated at the quarter-final stage of the UCL in each of the last three seasons.
What makes their European woes more disheartening for the Blaugrana is the fact that each of those Champions League campaigns were won by their arch-rivals Real Madrid, with the Spanish capital club becoming the first team to retain the UCL in its current format in 2017, and going one further by making it three in a row after their 3-1 victory over Liverpool in Kyiv in May.
Lionel Messi has also suffered a bit of a drop in performances on the continent in recent times, falling behind Cristiano Ronaldo in their personal battle in the Champions League.
Despite taking an initial lead on the Portuguese; he was the first of the pair to break Raul's previous record of 71 Champions League goals, with his 72nd strike in the competition coming in November of 2014 in a group stage clash Apoel Nicosia. However, Ronaldo beat him to 100 goals in the tournament, doing so with his brace against Bayern in April 2017.
Incredibly, Ronaldo also became the first man in history to score 100 goals in the competition for one club, beating Messi to this feat despite only joining Real Madrid in 2009, five seasons after Lionel Messi made his Barcelona debut.
Cristiano Ronaldo has won the Champions League Golden Boot in each of the last six seasons (sharing the 2015 edition jointly with Messi and Neymar). He is also the only player to have scored 15 goals in a single Champions League campaign, remarkably doing this on three occasions, while Lionel Messi has hit double figures in the Champions League just twice in the last six seasons.
This outperformance By Ronaldo on the continent has seen Messi overshadowed by the Portuguese in recent years in the awarding of individual honours, and saw him miss out on the top three nominees for the UEFA Men's Best Player for the third time in the last five seasons.
In what was once inconceivable when Messi had a 4-1 lead on Ronaldo in the Ballon d'Or race, Ronaldo has not only equalled him but also stands in good stead to overtake him when this year's awards are handed out in January on account of his Champions League achievements.
Barcelona's primary focus would be on regaining their lost place of pride in the Champions League, and they would need Messi to be at his absolute best to achieve this.
Lionel Messi would also seek to restore his status as the best player in the world, and the only way to achieve this would be by putting out extraordinary performances in the Champions League. Therefore his focus on achieving in Europe could be detrimental to his LaLiga campaign.
#3 Barcelona's pragmatic midfield
Once upon a time, the Barcelona midfield was the envy of all other clubs, boasting some of the finest midfielders to ever grace a football pitch. The Blaugrana had within its ranks players such as Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, Deco and Thiago Alcantara, which made sure Barcelona was not short on quality in the middle of the park.
However, after the departure of those golden midfielders, the acquisitions by the club in recent seasons has seen a departure from the prior focus on creative technique to a more direct approach, with the signings of Paulinho and later Arturo Vidal indicators of that.
The absence of creative players in the centre of the field for Barcelona has seen their chief goalscoring threat Lionel Messi drop deep in an attempt to influence proceeding from midfield, and this has had a consequent impact on their goal returns, as the club managed only 99 league goals last season, compared to the previous three where they scored 110 goals and above in LaLiga.
#2 Ronaldo's departure from LaLiga
Ronaldo and Messi are by far the most talented players of their generation and rightly mentioned in the greatest of all time debates.
The pair came in direct competition with one another following Ronaldo's then world record transfer to Real Madrid from Manchester United in the summer of 2009, and over the next nine years, they proceeded to give us one of the greatest rivalries in sporting history.
Ronaldo and Messi raised the bar of goalscoring to a level never seen before, as they both battled to outdo the other in their personal quest to prove who is the better of the two.
The results of their performances have been exceptional, as they have each set numerous goalscoring records, and won multiple Golden Boots in different competitions.
However, following Ronaldo's unforeseen transfer to Juventus during the last transfer window, their direct competition has been broken and with Ronaldo's departure must surely go some of Messi's motivation.
Both players have admitted in the past that their competition made them better, as it served as inspiration for each of them to strive and outdo the other's achievements.
Ronaldo is the only player in the world who can claim to be at a similar level to Lionel Messi, and his absence from LaLiga would leave Messi surrounded with players who can't light a candle to his abilities, and how this affects his drive to be LaLiga's top goalscorer remains to be seen.
#1 His selflessness
Beyond being just a prime goalscorer and a supreme playmaker, another well celebrated characteristic Messi possesses is his magnanimous nature.
The 31-year-old is Barcelona's undisputed penalty taker, but on numerous instances, Lionel Messi has passed up the opportunity to add more goals to his tally, preferring to boost the confidence of teammates, or aid in their own personal quests at the expense of himself.
He has allowed teammates such as Neymar and Suarez take penalties when he was on a hattrick, with Sunday's 8-2 victory over Huesca being the latest example. Numerous offers for Mascherano to break his Barcelona duck from the spot were also turned down by his compatriot, while he also infamously passed to ball to Suarez from the spot to aid in the Uruguayan's ultimately successful quest for the 2016 pichichi award.
Another indicator of this is the repertoire of instances where Messi set up teammates despite being in a goalscoring position, with Dembele's first Champions League goal for the club against Chelsea one of such examples.
Lionel's Messi's selfless nature when it comes to goalscoring goes in direct contrast with Ronaldo's selfish attitude who infamously complained about Arbeloa not passing the ball to him when the former Real Madrid defender scored his first league goal for Real Madrid goal in five seasons, and this is a factor which could see Lionel Messi not win the LaLiga Golden Boot this season.