Lionel Messi Best Season Statistics -

To appreciate the 73 goals, you have to remember the ecosystem. This was Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona at its most manic. It was the final year of the "Tiki-Taka" empire, a team so dominant that opponents had stopped trying to win the ball and started simply trying to survive.

It is the greatest individual rebuttal in sports history. On a team that was falling apart (Guardiola was leaving, Puyol was injured, the empire was crumbling), Messi decided that gravity was optional. lionel messi best season statistics

But numbers alone cannot explain the madness of that campaign. To understand Messi’s greatest season, you must understand that for 12 months, the Argentine didn't just break records; he broke the concept of what a single human is allowed to do on a pitch. To appreciate the 73 goals, you have to

But 2011-12 was also the year the world realized Messi had mutated. He was no longer just a winger or a false nine. He was omnipresent. Against Bayer Leverkusen, he scored five goals in a single Champions League night—a feat of clinical cruelty that left German defenders looking like training cones. It is the greatest individual rebuttal in sports history