9 stats that prove Lionel Messi is back to his spectacular best in 2022
Lionel Messi is looking back to his best, and his stats in 2022 for both Paris Saint-Germain and Argentina prove that.
It’s no secret that the little Argentine struggled in his first few months at PSG, but now he appears to have fully settled in the French capital.
He struggled with injury early on while also trying to settle in Paris, both on and off the pitch.
But while success in the Champions League might have alluded him once again, he has helped his nation qualify for the World Cup in Qatar and is on course to become a French champion for the first time.
Despite all the criticism and the noise about a potential return to Barcelona, it seems Messi is quietly turning out quality performances once again.
So here are nine stats that show Messi is back to his best in 2022.
– Messi has nine Ligue 1 assists in 2022 so far, which has helped him climb to second in the league’s overall assist chart this season with 13. Only Kylian Mbappe has more, with 14.
– Those nine assists included a hat-trick of assists against Clermont Foot, his sixth career assist hat-trick. Only one player has more in history, Mesut Ozil with seven.
That is LOVELY from PSG 😍
The Messi assist and the Mbappe finish, wow! pic.twitter.com/QgcMMXE3uS
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) April 9, 2022
– Messi’s also scored twice this year for PSG, both in the league, bringing his total goal contributions since the turn of the year to 11.
– In fact, of the nine league matches he’s played this year, Messi has only failed to either score or assist in two of them. He even assisted Marco Veratti in the 27 minutes he played against Reims in the first match of the new year.
READ: Where are they now? Argentina’s XI from Lionel Messi’s nightmare debut
– It’s not just for PSG where he’s impressed, but for his nation too. He scored a crucial goal against Venezuela as Argentina qualified for the World Cup in Qatar, taking him to 81 overall for his country, extending his record as Argentina’s greatest-ever goalscorer and highest-ever appearance maker.
– Therefore, across all competitions for both club and country, Messi has assisted nine and scored three in the 14 matches he’s played this year.
– This means he averages 0.64 assists per game and 0.23 goals a game in 2022.
– Therefore Messi in 2022 has an impressive 0.86 total goal contributions per game. And counting only the games he’s started, that goes up to 0.92 goal contributions per match.
– That’s a stark comparison to his PSG stats in 2021. In Ligue 1, he had 6 goal contributions in 11, a ratio of 0.55 contributions per game. Even that’s a level many players can only dream of playing at, but now Messi has truly gotten back to his best.
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