Lionel Messi is top of the MLS assists chart with nine from just nine appearances this season, but he surprisingly doesn’t feature in the top 10 chance creators of 2024. The 36-year-old’s nine assists have come from a total of 19 key passes (the final pass before a team-mate shoots at goal) in MLS so far this campaign, which places him 27th for that particular metric – behind the likes of Riqui Puig, Emil Forsberg and Ryan Gauld. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Messi creep up the chances created chart as the season progresses, given he was often somewhere around the top during his peak years i ..read more

Lionel Messi has been blessed with some world-class team-mates across his glittering career with Barcelona, PSG, Inter Miami and Argentina. The question is – can you name the players who have made the most appearances alongside the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner? The only clue you’re getting for this one is the total number of appearances, at the time of writing, that each player has made alongside Messi. Barcelona players unsurprisingly dominate the list, given that’s where he’s spent the bulk of his career, but there are also names in here that’ve lined up alongside Messi for Argentina, PSG a ..read more

During his peak years at Barcelona, Lionel Messi consistently ranked among the top dribblers across Europe’s major leagues. Nowadays, having lost that explosive pace from his younger days, how does the Argentinian icon compare to the best dribblers in MLS? He may no longer be the fastest player around, but Messi’s close control remains a thing of wonder – and has seen him dribble past hapless MLS defenders time and again this season. Here are the 10 players that have completed the most successful dribbles in the 2024 MLS season. 10. Lionel Messi – 20 Messi only just sneaks into the top 10, but ..read more

Kylian Mbappe has some catching up to do on Lionel Messi if he’s ever to compete with the Argentinian icon in terms of silverware. PSG’s shock elimination to Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League semi-finals ensures that Mbappe will leave the club this summer without having lifted European football’s most prestigious trophy. The World Cup winner has spent the last seven seasons at the Parc des Princes. In that time he’s won six Ligue 1 titles with the Parisiens, scoring considerably more goals than anyone else in the French top flight over that period, but ultimately his only success has b ..read more

How are the next generation of football superstars meant to progress the game when Lionel Messi continues to defy time and space and do the unthinkable? How is Ray Hudson ever going to be able to retire if Messi continues to find more impossible tasks that only he can make look not just possible, but routine? How are we as mere mortals ever expected to feel good about ourselves when Messi continues to prove week in, week out, across the globe why he is undoubtedly better at football than all of us combined ever will be at anything? These are questions which all share the same answer – there is ..read more

Lionel Messi only failed to score against eight of the teams he ever faced in competitive games for Barcelona – but can you name them? We’ve given you 10 minutes to try and have listed the country of each club he’s failed to score against, plus the number of times Messi has faced them. If this puts you in the mood for another challenge, why not try to name every team Messi has scored five or more goals against? If you haven’t already, sign up for a Planet Sport account to access hints for those tricky answers and to register your score on the leaderboard. Good luck, and don’t fo ..read more

Lionel Messi scored two more goals on a warm Saturday night in Massachusetts. He nearly scored a third. He assisted Inter Miami’s fourth. And he did it without producing anything remarkable, by his impeccably high standards. But Messi’s numbers thus far in his first full MLS season are; he has now scored nine times in six-and-a-half MLS games in 2024. Toss in seven assists, as per the MLS’s somewhat generous definition, and he’s averaging 2.5 goal contributions per 90 minutes. Which is quite absurd. Remember when Messi took America by storm last summer? It took him 731 minutes against MLS foes ..read more

Mauricio Pochettino lasted less than two years at Paris Saint-Germain. But what kind of legacy did the Argentinian leave at the Parc des Princes in terms of squad additions? Eight players were drafted in during Pochettino’s reign, which began midway through the underwhelming 2020-21 campaign. Appointed as Thomas Tuchel’s successor, the Parisiens ultimately ended that season as runners-up to surprise Ligue 1 champions Lille. PSG responded to finishing second by making a number of marquee signings in the summer of 2021. They went on to reclaim the Ligue 1 title in Pochettino’s one and only full ..read more

The Messifying of the United States continues with almost indecent haste – especially after the World Cup winner put on another clinic during Inter Miami’s win over Nashville. Messi continues to pull in huge crowds across the United States, with more than 72,000 spectators packing into Arrowhead Stadium for his recent MLS outing against Sporting Kansas City. A-list guests are flocking to watch him in action, including Hollywood actor Paul Scheer, who attended Inter Miami’s 1-1 draw with LA Galaxy in February that saw the mercurial No.10 net a 92nd-minute equaliser. And Scheer told the Off ..read more

A football player is worth what you pay for them, really.  Liverpool once paid £35million for Andy Carroll, whilst Robert Lewandowski joined Bayern Munich for a total of zero euros. Money isn’t real. Sometimes that’s just how the dice of life fall. Transfermarkt still slap a market value on all your favourite players, though. It’s basically impossible to predict and we have no idea what goes into their algorithm, so we’re not going to try and decipher it. What we can do is present to you the MLS’s top ten most highly valued footballers in 2024 according to Transfermarkt, and simply hope t ..read more