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Paris Saint-Germain maintained their unbeaten begin to the 2022-23 Champions League group stage due to a 1-1 draw towards Benfica on Wednesday night time — an evening on which Lionel Messi wrote his title into the competitors file books as soon as once more.
The Argentine maestro opened the scoring on the Estadio da Luz with a lovely curling effort that noticed him become the first player to score against 40 different teams within the Champions League.
Messi latched on to a Neymar help to bend an beautiful first-time effort previous Benfica keeper Odysseas Vlachodimos from 20 yards to attain from exterior the world for the twelfth time in his Champions League profession. Peerless as ever, no participant has discovered the online from vary extra typically within the final decade.
As if his expertise was ever unsure, the 35-year-old is on a six-game scoring streak for membership and nation that represents his greatest run of kind in entrance of objective for the reason that 2018-19 season. He’s again to his greatest and, with 127 objectives within the Champions League to his credit score, he is also within touching distance of Cristiano Ronaldo’s competitors file of 141 objectives.
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Benfica grew to become the fortieth membership added to Messi’s lengthy listing of vanquished Champions League opponents — lower than a month after Israeli facet Maccabi Haifa grew to become the thirty ninth when he netted towards them in a 3-1 victory in mid-September. That objective noticed Messi overtake perennial sparring accomplice Ronaldo, with the Portuguese having scored towards 38 completely different golf equipment within the Champions League as issues stand.
Prime scorers in Champions League vs. completely different golf equipment
1. Lionel Messi: 40 golf equipment
2. Cristiano Ronaldo: 38 golf equipment
3. Karim Benzema: 34 golf equipment
4. Raul Gonzalez: 33 golf equipment
5. Robert Lewandowski: 31 golf equipment
6. Zlatan Ibrahimovic: 29 golf equipment
7. Thomas Muller: 29 golf equipment
8. Ruud van Nistelrooy: 25 golf equipment
9. Thierry Henry: 24 golf equipment
10. Sergio Aguero: 24 golf equipment
Because the UEFA Champions League was inaugurated as a contest in 1992-93, 100 completely different golf equipment from throughout Europe have taken half and Messi has now scored towards 40% of them.
No membership has felt his wrath fairly like Arsenal, who’ve conceded extra objectives to him than some other workforce. He has 9 objectives in six video games towards the Gunners in Europe — together with 4 in a single match in 2010 — a prolific single-opponent spree that consists of a objective each 59 minutes, 40 seconds.
Bayer Leverkusen have taken the largest single-game hit to this point, when Messi rattled 5 objectives in a single match towards the bewildered Germans to encourage Barcelona to a complete 7-1 win in March 2012.
Arsenal: 9 objectives in 6 video games (537 minutes in complete)
Celtic: 8 objectives in 6 video games (488 minutes)
AC Milan: 8 objectives in 8 video games (720 minutes)
Bayer Leverkusen: 7 objectives in 3 video games (270 minutes)
Manchester Metropolis: 7 objectives in 8 video games (720 minutes)
Ajax: 6 objectives in 3 video games (247 minutes)
Paris Saint-Germain: 6 objectives in 10 video games (794 minutes)
Lyon: 5 objectives in 6 video games (538 minutes)
Bayern Munich: 4 objectives in 6 video games (540 minutes)
Manchester United: 4 objectives in 6 video games (512 minutes)
Messi has solely ever scored one Champions League objective towards Borussia Dortmund, Borussia Monchengladbach, Ferencvaros, Maccabi Haifa, Napoli, Olympiakos, Rangers, Slavia Prague, Sporting CP, Werder Bremen and Benfica, the most recent addition to his hitlist.
He has confronted a complete of 44 completely different golf equipment from 19 completely different international locations in Europe’s elite competitors and to this point has solely failed to attain towards 4 of them: Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan, Rubin Kazan and Udinese.
With Atletico and Inter each participating on this 12 months’s competitors, it’s completely believable that he may prolong his unbelievable Champions League file even additional earlier than the top of the 2022-23 season.
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