Lionel Messi is again facing a new historical milestone in his illustrious career. The Argentine superstar is currently only one goal away from his 900th goal in his professional career.
If he reaches this number, Messi will become the second player in football history to reach the milestone of 900 goals while still playing, after Cristiano Ronaldo. The Portuguese superstar set this milestone in September 2024 and is currently the only player in contemporary football to surpass that number.
The gap between these two legends and the rest of the football world is very large. Among the players still playing, Robert Lewandowski - who has the third best scoring record - only owns about 690 goals.
Messi's scoring journey began in May 2005. At that time, the young Argentine talent came on as a substitute in the Barcelona vs Albacete match and scored his first goal in his career, contributing to sealing a 2-0 victory for the Catalan team.
From that moment at Camp Nou, Messi wrote one of the greatest stories in football history. In more than two decades, he continuously broke scoring records and won countless titles with Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, the Argentine national team and currently Inter Miami.
At nearly 39 years old, El Pulga still maintains an incredible scoring performance. This makes many people begin to question whether he can aim for the milestone of 1,000 goals - a achievement that Ronaldo is also pursuing.
Ronaldo, at the age of 41, is currently only about 40 goals away from the 1,000-goal mark. Meanwhile, Messi is almost two and a half years younger than CR7 and still shows stable scoring ability.
With his current form, Messi reaching the 900-goal mark is probably only a matter of time. And if he continues to maintain the scoring pace as he is now, the Argentine superstar can completely continue to conquer milestones that seemed impossible in the rest of his career.
When can Messi reach the milestone of 1,000 goals?
Messi still needs to score more than 100 more goals to reach the milestone of 1,000 goals in his career, but that is not too far-fetched a goal for the Argentine superstar.
At the age of 38, Messi still has three seasons in his contract with Inter Miami after signing an extension in October 2025. This contract is expected to last until the end of the MLS 2028 season, when he turns 41.
Since joining MLS in July 2023, Messi has maintained a fairly stable scoring performance, averaging about 36 goals per season for both Inter Miami and the Argentine national team. To date, he has scored 80 goals for the club and 12 goals for the national team during that time.
However, there are still many doubts about how long Messi will continue to play internationally. In an interview with ESPN in December last year, he did not confirm that he would participate in the 2026 World Cup. If Messi leaves the Argentine national team after this tournament, his total number of goals each season may decrease.
However, if he still maintains an average of about 36 goals per season for Inter Miami after the World Cup, Messi can completely reach the milestone of 1,000 goals around the end of the MLS 2028 season - the last year in his current contract.
Of course, this is just an estimated calculation, not including changes in form or physical condition in the future. However, a similar calculation method has been applied to predict Ronaldo's journey towards the milestone of 1,000 goals. And to this day, those predictions are still quite close to reality.
