Barcelona thrashed Levante 5-0 in La Liga on Sunday night with Lionel Messi scoring a hat-trick. Neymar opened the scoring before Messi scored three goals and Luis Suarez finished things off with a bicycle kick to help the Catalan club close the gap to Real Madrid to just one point in the table.
The match also saw a number of milestones and records being set by Messi and the Blaugrana.
1) This was Lionel Messi’s 300th La Liga match for Barcelona – 225 wins, 46 draws and 29 losses.
2) Messi has now scored 269 goals in the league for Barcelona – 34 penalties, 9 headers, 38 goals from outside the box and 13 goals from direct free kicks.
3) In 20 games against Levante, Barcelona have scored in each and every match – 63 goals in all.
4) Messi now has 34 career hat-tricks for Barcelona and Argentina. He is ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo who has 30.
5) Messi also equalled Ronaldo for the most La Liga hat-tricks with 23.
6) In Spanish club football, Messi has 31 hat-tricks in all competitions – tied with Telmo Zarra (31) and ahead of Alfredo Di Stefano (28) and Ronaldo (27).
7) The hat-trick against Levante was Messi’s fifth hat-trick of the season.
8) Barcelona have won 11 matches in a row in all competitions – the first time they have achieved the feat since 2008 in Pep Guardiola’s first season in charge of the club.
9) Messi is currently on a goalscoring streak at the camp Nou – 17 goals since Barcelona’s 5-1 win over Sevilla in November 2014.
Goals | Assists | Total | |
---|---|---|---|
Lionel Messi | 26 | 13 | 39 |
Cristiano Ronaldo | 28 | 10 | 38 |
Neymar | 17 | 4 | 21 |
Stats taken from Infostrada, WhoScored and @OptaJose