Sunday’s edition of El Clásico was one of the best we’ve ever seen, and it ended in amazing fashion. With Barcelona needing a goal to not just win the game against Real Madrid, but stay in the La Liga title race, Lionel Messi came up huge. Here’s his goal to give Barca the 3-2 victory with the absolute last play of the game.
Lionel Messi wins El Clásico by scoring 500th career goal for Barcelona vs. Real Madrid
Not only was it an amazing last-minute winner, it was a big milestone for Leo.
Photo by Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images
If Barca failed to win this game, Madrid was almost certainly walking away with the championship. Los Merengues came into the match with a three-point lead in La Liga, plus a match in hand. Madrid still controls their own title destiny, but this win by Barcelona gives them a chance to catch up.
It was Messi’s second goal of the game, too — his first might not have been as big, but it was even more impressive. This will go down as one of Messi’s most legendary Clásico performances.
The game-winning goal was also a huge milestone for Messi: his 500th career goal in all competitions for Barcelona.
Messi is already Barcelona’s all-time leading scorer by an incredible margin. He’s got more than double César Rodríguez Álvarez’s 232 career goals in a Blaugrana shirt. The gap to modern-era players is even bigger — Samuel Eto’o and Rivaldo only scored 130 goals each for Barcelona. It’s possible that Messi ends his Barcelona career with four times more goals than any of his peers.
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