Lionel Messi (495) becomes top goalscorer across Top-5 European leagues

PSG hosted and defeated second-place Lens 3-1 to put a virtual ending to the Ligue 1 race with Lens now dropping to the third position in the table and Olympique Marseille trumping them. One of the reasons for that? Lionel Messi's record-breaking campaign.

The Argentine world champion keeps breaking records seemingly on a weekly basis and this last weekend he accomplished another goalscoring feat by drawing a mark once reached by long-time nemesis Cristiano Ronaldo.

Messi, who scored off a Kylian Mbappe backheel pass, hit his 495th goal across Europe's Top-5 leagues locking into a tie with Ronaldo. One more goal by the PSG forward would make him the sole leader in that particular category, something that could happen as early as next Friday in Paris Saint-Germain's match against bottom-dwellers Angers.

In the history of top-flight leagues in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, only Cristiano Ronaldo has scored as many goals as Messi now has, both sitting pretty at 495 each.

Ronaldo needed 626 appearances in the Premier League, La Liga, and Serie A combined to reach that mark. Messi, by comparison, needed just 572 games to match Ronaldo. Let me do the math for you. Ronaldo scored 0.79 goals per game to Messi's impressive 0.87 (and growing).

Across Europe's Top-5 leagues, Messi also has nearly 100 more assists than Ronaldo through last weekend, a distance that will inevitably keep growing as Messi wants to keep playing football in the Old Continent next season and beyond.

Last Saturday, on the day that PSG returned to the Parc des Princes with half of the Ultras stand closed, Messi put on a magnificent performance and a total show.

Messi did it all on the pitch on Saturday and reminded us that he still has it in him if/when he wants to deliver the goodies. Assisted, scored, dribbled, and drove Lens defenders mad,... If only had this Messi played against Bayern Munich instead of the version that did so a few weeks ago... Now, we can only wait and see how his contract negotiations with PSG go and where they end up in a few weeks' time.