Lionel Messi was able to celebrate his 700th match appearance for Barcelona as he presented another dominating performance for the team to allow the clubs to win their group of Champions League for the 13th season in a row.
Messi led the victory of Barcelona by 3-1 over Borussia Dortmund as he scored one goal and then allowed his teammates to score the other two by setting them up. Other goals were scored by Antoine Griezmann and Luis Suárez.
The forward of Barcelona took his time and full advantage of the space that defenders of Dortmund gave him as he dribbled repeatedly past their defenses to have the crowd on their feet.
After setting up Suárez to make a goal, he took the club’s goal total to a club rerecord of 613 goals. Suárez came to assist Messi as his strike partner during the 2nd half and ultimately had the scoreboard read 2-0. The goal from Griezmann was also on a pass made by Messi that allowed for the game to be out of the reach of Dortmund to win. Still, their substitute player Jadon Sancho was able to score one goal to deny his team a shutout loss.
With Messi having played 700 games for Barca, he is ahead of the previous person to have most appearances for the Spanish Club; Xavi Hernández with his 767 appearances.
Marc-Andre ter Stegen, the goalkeeper for Barcelona said, “700 games with Barcelona is not a normal thing and neither is what Messi has done on the pitch.”
Messi, who scored his goal of the game during the 33rd minute, was able to set up another milestone with his goal. He has now become the only and the first player to have scored a goal against 34 different teams in the Champions League. He was on his way to score another goal when he curled the football on a free-kick but it hit the crossbar. So far, Messi has scored 144 career goals in the Champions League.
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