Barcelona's opening goal against Espanyol awarded to Messi by Marca

MARCA have decided that Lionel Messi's free-kick goal against Espanyol should not go down as an own goal and have overturned the initial decision, meaning that the Argentine is now on 31 goals in LaLiga Santander this season.

Espanyol defender Victor Sanchez diverted Messi's dead ball into his own net to open the scoring in the Catalan derby.

Although first regarded as an own goal, the MARCA team decided to re-examine the goal and voted 4-3 in favour of the strike being attributed to Messi.

The fact that MARCA awards the LaLiga Santander top scorer prize and is the Spanish representative of ESM, the association that grants the Golden Shoe urged us to review the occasion.

A team consisted of Juan Ignacio Gallardo, Gerardo Riquelme, Mario Gomez Estrela, Emilio Contreras and Edu Garcia, Roberto Palomar and Fernando Carnerero was brought together to decide whether the goal should be granted to the Barcelona captain or not.

MARCA's aim is to respect the essence and the regulations of the Pichichi trophy, which this newspaper grants and, therefore, it is our responsibility to resolve any issue internally.

The main argument to decide in favour of granting Messi the goal, was that it seems unlikely that Diego Lopez could have reached the ball, should the player not have intervened.

Thus, the ball was only deflected into the back of the net and is not considered as an own goal occasion.

Messi leads the LaLiga Santander scoring charts, as well as the Golden Shoe award race with 31 goals and the director of MARCA, Juan Ignacio Gallardo, has informed the ESM, who will publish the rankings on Wednesday.