Messi into Inter Miami’s top 3 scorers of ALL TIME after SIX games

Robin Bairner
Robin Bairner
  • 16 Aug 2023 09:07 BST
  • 3 min read
Lionel Messi, Inter Miami, 2023
© ProShots

Lionel Messi has gone through his career generating an incredible sequence of statistics and breaking apparently every record there is, yet perhaps the craziest is that it has taken him only six matches to break into Inter Miami’s top three scorers of all time.

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The 35-year-old World Cup winner has bagged nine goals (plus one assist), in just six matches (and only five starts) for David Beckham’s MLS franchise and has not even played a minute of league football, yet that is sufficient to lift him into an elite group of players for a club that has been active since 2020.

Lionel Messi at Inter Miami: Goals, assists, results & fixtures in 2023

While Inter Miami are a new side, they have still been active for three-and-a-half years, so for Messi to be among their leading marksmen ever after just 504 minutes of action is remarkable.

Messi is already the leading all-time scorer, assist maker and appearance maker at Barcelona, and the Argentine can already have set his ambitions to become Inter Miami’s top goal getter.

Indeed, he must already be eyeing the club's single-season scoring record, which stands at the 16 goals Gonzalo Higuain struck in 2022. Messi, who might be two goals better off in Miami if he were on penalty duty, is only seven short of equalling that record with plenty of time for him to achieve it.

Inter Miami all time leading scorers

NameGoals
Gonzalo Higuain29
Leonardo Campana16
Lionel Messi9
Robert Taylor9
Josef Martinez9
Lewis Morgan7
Rodolfo Pizarro7
Ariel Lassiter6
Brek Shea6
Robbie Robinson6
Indiana Vassilev5

Former Argentina teammate Gonzalo Higuain, who retired last summer, leads the way for the Storks, having scored 29 times for them between 2020-22. No one is close to the former Napoli and Juventus hitman, with Leonardo Campana second on 16 goals – and though he is still active at the club, Messi could well chase him down by the end of the MLS season.

Indeed, that looks like a probability given the way Messi has started life in the US.

He is presently scoring at a rate of 1.5 goals per game – no one else at Inter Miami has managed even 0.5 while only Higuain (0.41) and current teammate Josef Martinez (0.3) have even reached the standard of one strike in five appearances.

What Messi, who will surely lead Inter Miami against Nashville SC in the final of the Leagues Cup on Saturday, is doing is quite unprecedented.

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