JAKARTA - Lionel Messi is at the top of LaLiga Santander's list of top scorers for the fourth consecutive season this season. It's not new news that the Argentine has outperformed all the strikers in Spain, but what is strange is that La Pulga did it with just 14 goals.
The Barcelona captain leads the list of El Pichichi (top scorers) with a one-goal advantage over Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema. This is the lowest goal tally in the hunt for top scorer in Spanish football.
Launching Marca, Wednesday, February 12, the last time the top scorer scored was minimal while LaLiga was in the 2006/07 season. After going through 23 games that season, Diego Milito (Real Zaragoza) led with 13 goals, followed by Ruud van Nistelrooy (Real Madrid) with 11 balls.
Van Nistelrooy stepped on the gas scoring 14 more goals in the last 14 games and ended the season as El Pichichi with 25 goals. Since then, the El Pichichi trophy winners in the following seasons have been much more fertile.
With the same number of games as now, Messi scored 25 goals in 2018/19 season, 18 goals in 2017/18 and 23 goals in 2016/17, while Luis Suarez scored 24 goals in 2015/16 and Cristiano Ronaldo scored 24 goals in 2015/16 when he last won the El Pichichi trophy.
The current Barcelona captain has scored even less than the 19 goals scored by Diego Forlan in 2008/19 and the 22 goals that belonged to Luis Fabiano in 2007/08.
LaLiga Santander's lowest goal scoring since 2006/07
It's not just El Pichichi's title seekers who have trouble scoring goals, all LaLiga Santander participants this season are indeed struggling hard to tear their opponent's nets. So far, 583 goals have been scored, the lowest in 13 years.
Compare when Cristiano Ronaldo was still playing with Real Madrid. The competition between the Portugal and Argentina captains in LaLiga has never resulted in under 600 goals. Without Ronaldo, the figure has fallen below 600 again, as it was in 2007/08 (593) and 2006/07 (540).
What happened in the 2006/07 season is not a bad thing for Real Madrid. At that time Fabio Capello's team won the title and Van Nistelrooy topped the list of goalscorers. Could it be this season? Still need to wait.
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