Lionel Messi breaks UEFA record

A Champions League love story – Barcelona’s Lionel Messi breaks the competition record with his 19th strike in knockout games.

The Argentine, still only 24, surpassed Raul and Andriy Shevchenko with his late strike away to Bayer Leverkusen on Tuesday night

The Ballon d’Or winner scored an incredible 53 in all competitions last term and has already added an astonishing 37 in 2010-12 for Barca, playing – as always – with plenty of heart.

So it is perhaps fitting that on Saint Valentine’s Day, the much-admired Argentine created his own celebration of love by breaking yet another record, as he surpassed the mark set for goals scored in the knockout stages of the Champions League in Germany on Tuesday, with his 19th strike in games played at the business end of the tournament.

Messi had scored six against Arsenal and 12 others before Tuesday, to bring up 18 in total, leaving him level – at the age of just 24 – with Raul and Andriy Shevchenko, now in their mid-30s and on the verge of retirement from the game.

Messi now has 44 goals in Europe’s premier club competition, leaving him sixth on the tournament’s all-time list of top goalscorers – behind Raul (71), Ruud van Nistelrooy (56), Thierry Henry (55), Shevchenko (48) and Inzaghi (46) while Cristiano Ronaldo, incidentally, is in 10th place with 31. But almost half of his goals have come in the knockout stages, which is a measure of Barca’s success in the competition over the last few years.

Messi missed the latter stages of the Catalans’ 2006 win due to injury, but was instrumental in both the 2009 and 2011 successes, scoring in the two finals against Manchester United and netting a delightful double at Real Madrid in last year’s semi-final showdown at the Bernabeu.