Mesmeric Messi makes Champions League history with five goals

Lionel Messi became the first player to score five goals in one Champions League game last night and moved to within seven goals of becoming the highest goalscorer in Barcelona’s history at the age of just 24.

In keeping with the extraordinary nature of his record-breaking career the player had complained of a headache before the one-man demolition of the team that just four days earlier had beaten Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga.

“It’s not easy to score five goals in one game. I can say that because I only scored 11 in my entire career. Give him another game and he will equal me,” said manager Pep Guardiola after the game.

Messi’s five goals mean for Barcelona and Argentina he has now scored 250 goals in 378 games, 49 in 53 games this season. His tally in European matches is now 54.

He has 49 goals in the Champions League 12 this season — that is twice more than the second highest scorer Mario Gómez’s six goal tally.

Guadiola said: “He is the best in the world and I am lucky to say that I have coached him. He is unique in terms of talent but also in terms of his competitiveness.

“He does not think about the big records. He scores one and tries to score the second; he gets the second; and he wants the third; that is how he thinks.

The Barcelona manager was beaming not just with Messi’s incredible performance but with his team’s annihilation of Bayer Leverkusen.

Messi opened the scoring on 25 minutes from a Xavi Hernandez pass. He got the second from a Cesc

Fabregas pass just before the break and in the second half with Barcelona already safely into the quarter-final draw he went into overdrive.

He scored from Andrés Iniesta’s pass four minutes into the second period, and again after 58 and 84 minutes.

“It’s nice to score five goals, I don’t recall having done it before in my career, I’m very happy,” he said.

Guardiola had given him a week off after after a fifth yellow card in La Liga ruled him out of last weekend’s league game. The rest appeared to have done him the world of good.

Match details:

Barcelona: Valdes, Dani Alves, Pique, Mascherano, Adriano (Muniesa 63), Xavi (Keita 53), Busquets, Iniesta (Tello 53), Fabregas, Pedro, Messi.
Subs: Pinto, Cuenca, Roberto, Bartra.

Bayer Leverkusen: Leno, Castro, Schwaab, Toprak, Kadlec, Reinartz, Bender (Schurrle 55), Rolfes, Renato Augusto (Oczipka 67), Kiessling, Derdiyok (Bellarabi 55).
Subs: Giefer, Friedrich, Ortega, Zenga.
Booked: Rolfes,Castro.

Referee: S Oddvar Moen (Norway).