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Penalties have always been a topic of fascinating discourse for football afficionados and experts alike. They are rare moments of one-on-one situations in a team game that can decide the course of a match or title, an aspect of the sport that couldn't have been appreciated more by last season's La Liga winners Real Madrid.
Los Blancos scored 15% of their La Liga goals (11 of 70) last season from the penalty spot and were the only team in the competition's top five to score from all their spot-kicks. Captain Sergio Ramos led from the front by scoring six successful penalties, two of them being game-winners, as Real Madrid won their first La Liga title in three years.
Top five active penalty takers in La Liga
Ramos has an impressive penalty conversion rate in the Spanish top flight; he has only missed one spot-kick during his 16-season La Liga career. Let us find out if the Real Madrid captain is among the five active La Liga players with the most successful penalties in the competition.
#5 Alvaro Negredo (Cadiz) - 19 penalties
Sergio Ramos misses out on a place in the top-five as the much-travelled Alvaro Negredo, who has been signed up by newly-promoted Cadiz, has the fifth-most number of successful penalties by an active player in the La Liga.
Negredo has scored 19 penalties (from 24 attempts) in the La Liga, a tally that consists of one successful spot-kick for Valencia, 11 for Sevilla and seven for Almeria.
His last penalty in La Liga proved to be the match-winner for Valencia against Getafe in the 2014-15 edition of the competition.
#4 Raul Garcia (Athletic Bilbao) - 17 penalties
34-year-old Athletic Bilbao midfielder Raul Garcia has scored 17 (of 20) penalties in the La Liga, with all but one coming for his present club.
In a career-best season in 2019-20, Garcia scored 15 goals in the La Liga, a tally that comprised of a league-high seven successful spot-kicks, with Bilbao winning four of these seven games and drawing three.
#3 Iago Aspas (Celta Vigo) - 22 penalties
33-year-old Celta Vigo striker Iago Aspas' 22 successful penalties put him in joint-fourth place in the list of all-time penalty-takers in La Liga history. Interestingly, the Spaniard has scored a quarter of his La Liga goals (91) from the penalty spot.
Aspas converted five of his seven La Liga spot-kicks last season, missing against Real Valladolid and Eibar as Vigo drew goalless against the former and lost 0-2 to the latter.
#2 Dani Parejo (Villareal) - 26 penalties
Dani Parejo, who has joined Villareal after a successful nine-season stint with Valencia, has scored 26 (out of 32) penalties in the La Liga.
Last season, Parejo converted five of his six La Liga spot-kicks for Valencia who finished a lowly ninth in the league table.
#1 Lionel Messi (Barcelona) - 57 penalties
Not surprisingly, it is all-time La Liga top-scorer Lionel Messi who has the most penalties (57) of any active player in the competition.
The diminutive Argentinian, who decided to stay on at Barcelona after expressing his wish to leave the club at the end of the season, needs four more successful spot-kicks in the La Liga to go level with all-time record-scorer Cristiano Ronaldo (61).
Last season, Messi scored all five of his La Liga spot-kicks en route to scoring 25 goals in the competition. However, the Barcelona captain, despite his fabulous goal-scoring prowess, has a rather underwhelming penaltyconversion rate in the Spanish top-flight.
The 33-year-old has missed as many as 12 penalties in the La Liga, with four of them coming in the 2015-16 edition of the competition. In fact, Messi has missed a La Liga penalty in each of the last six seasons prior to 2019-20.
