Messi is just two away from 400 league goals

Ronaldinho set up Messi for his debut goal in LaLiga against Albacete. The Argentine ace has two objectives for 2019: winning the Champions League and Ballon d'Or.

Lionel Messi is the kind of player who always has an objective on the horizon. He has been spending the Christmas break with his family back home in Rosario but 2019 promises to be yet another year of landmarks for the Argentinean. Messi was on target against Celta in Barça's last league outing on 22 December, which leaves him just two goals short of reaching the 400-goal mark in LaLiga - in which he is the competition's all-time top goal scorer, head and shoulders above the players who are still active (Athletic Club's Aritz Aduriz is the closest on 155 goals). When the domestic competition resumes on 6 January, Messi will have the first chance to add to his league tally when Barça travel to Getafe.

LaLiga's all-time top scorer by a long way

Since he overtook Telmo Zarra's 50-year league record by hitting a hat trick against Sevilla on 22 November 2014, Messi has showed no signs of tiring in finding the back of the net. Today, he finds himself on 398 goals in LaLiga - 87 ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo who is now scoring freely himself in Serie A. The only other players still active in LaLiga in the top 30 are Aduriz (155) and Karim Benzema (132).

Incredible achievement

Once he scores his next two league goals, which inevitably he will, Messi will become one of just seven players to have reached the 400-goal mark in Europe's top leagues. He will join an elite group including Imre Schlosser, Jimmy McGrory, Cristiano and Uwe Seeler but still with a way to go to match the only two players who have managed to hit 500 league goals - Josep Bican and Ferenc Puskás.