With the goal scored on his Inter Miami debut, Lionel Messi set a crazy 1-0-2 record of world football.
On the morning of July 22, Vietnam time, Lionel Messi had the first minutes of play for Inter Miami in the match against Cruz Azul in the Leagues Cup. The 36-year-old superstar entered the field from the 54th minute when the score was 1-1 and scored a super free kick in the last minute of injury time that made the whole DRV PNK like to explode.
The goal that brought an important victory for the MLS team marked Messi’s explosive debut. Not stopping there, the last free-kick also helped M10 set a crazy record of 1-0-2 of world football.
Specifically, Inter Miami’s Lionel Messi has become the first player to score 700 goals without penalties. El Pulga’s unique achievement is far ahead of second place Cristiano Ronaldo with 686 penalty-free goals in his career.
Messi becomes the first and only player in history to score 700 goals without penalties (Image: Inside Sport)
Notably, Messi’s scoring performance without penalties is also slightly better than his longtime rival with 121 minutes/goal compared to CR7’s 138 minutes/goal.
Out of the 700 goals mentioned above of Messi, 621 goals were scored by him for clubs and 79 goals were scored for the Argentina national team. Meanwhile, Ronaldo is still leading in the number of goals without penalties at international level with 105 goals.
Sharing about the moment of scoring the decisive goal that gave Inter Miami an important victory, Messi said: ” Right before the free kick, all I saw was the goal. I knew I had to score in that situation. It was the last chance of the game, I wanted to score it so the team wouldn’t have to take the penalty again. Most importantly, my team won, this will be a big motivation for me going forward.”
In the next round of the Leagues Cup group stage, Inter Miami will face domestic rival Atalanta United. NHM expects Messi to start from the beginning in this match after the last super debut.