Earlier this week, Lionel Messi scored his 644th goal of his career with Barcelona, defeating Valladolid, 3-0, thus breaking Pele’s record set in nearly 50 years of most goals scored for one club. While records from back in the day can be choppy, Pele has officially said he has found the back of the net 643 times in 656 games for Santos. Messi took 749 matches. Zombie.
In any case, Messi’s standing as one of the best players ever to play this game is not in doubt at all, but the coolest way to celebrate his achievement is thanks to a propaganda stunt from Budweiser, from all companies.
The (nearby) American beer maker, who calls himself the “King of Bears” and all of that, decided to honor the king of football by sending a bottle of bud dedicated to each of his goals to the goalkeeper who admitted it. Goal. That’s 644 beer bottles against 644 goals against 160 different goalkeepers.
Some, especially those with long-running positions in La Liga, have had a rather large turnover. Iker Casillas received 17 bottles. Jan Oblak was two of the Under 12 Packs. Former Valencia and Almeria goalkeeper Diego Alves got more than twice that, with 21 bottles, to lead the way.
A couple of Budweisers have landed in Cobham as well, destined for one Kepa Arrizabalaga who abandoned these two before joining Chelsea. Messi was known to have had a long period of drought against Chelsea, even though he eventually broke that down in 2017-18. Thibaut Courtois was in the net for us by then Petr Čech would end up giving up Messi, tooAfter moving to Arsenal.
Anyway, congratulations to everyone involved in this little propaganda trick. The beer may not be that good, but that is not the point anyway.
Notice: If you have an hour (!), Here are all of Messi’s 643 goals before he sets the record on Tuesday.
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