Barcelona’s 125th anniversary: 7% of goals scored by Messi, three papal conclaves and 132 trophies

Friday, November 29, 2024, will mark the 125-year anniversary of the formation of FC Barcelona.

To mark the occasion, The Athletic is running a series of pieces, celebrating the people and the moments who have helped make the club what it is today.

First up was the story of Joan Gamper, the man who founded the club. Next, our statistics expert Will Jeanes runs through some of the most significant numbers in the club’s history…

Barcelona, one of the most famous and successful clubs in world football, is about to turn 125 years old.

One hundred and twenty-five years of some of the greatest players, sides and moments in the sport’s history.

What began as a Swiss businessman’s park team as the sun set on the 19th century is now one of the biggest global brands in the world with fans in every corner of the planet.

The sheer number of trophies, records and statistics is mindboggling — and that’s just for their most famed former player, Lionel Messi.

What is the club’s biggest victory? How many men have won the World Cup while playing for Barcelona? And what percentage of the total number of Barca goals have been scored by the Argentinian who dazzled the Camp Nou for almost 17 years?

Here, The Athletic picks out the best numbers from Barcelona’s history. There are quite a few…

Editor’s note: All numbers and statistics in this article refer to the Barcelona men’s team only.

Barcelona’s first football match took place just over a week after their founding in November 1899 by Joan Gamper — a 1-0 loss to ‘English Colony’, a team, unsurprisingly, made up of Englishmen living in the Catalan city which, at the time, had a population of around 530,000. Now, the second-largest city in Spain is home to more than 1.6million people.

That was a friendly game, however, with the club’s first competitive outing a 2-1 defeat by the now-defunct Hispania Athletic Club in January 1901 in the also now-defunct Copa Macaya — a short-lived competition involving only clubs from Catalonia.

Overall, Barca have played 4,367 competitive games in their 125 years of existence. Messi, who made his debut for the club in October 2004 at the age of 17, has played in more of them than anyone else. He surpassed his former team-mate and the club’s future manager Xavi at the top of the list in a 6-1 victory against Real Sociedad in March 2021. Messi, you will not be shocked to read, scored twice and provided one assist in that match in San Sebastian.

Messi left the club that summer, making his final Barca appearance in a loss to Celta Vigo in May 2021. He was 33 years old in that match, which, given how much he achieved at the Camp Nou, seems very young looking back now.

Eight of the top 10 appearance-makers in Barcelona’s history have played for the club in the last 11 years. Carles Rexach (final game in 1981) and Migueli (1988) are the two exceptions.

George Girvan, a 22-year-old Scotsman, scored the club’s first competitive goal in that loss to Hispania Athletic Club in 1901 — and Barca have gone on to score another 9,406 since then. Here are the 10 players to have scored the most goals for the Catalans.

Of these men, only four (Cesar Rodriguez, Mariano Martin, Rexach and Josep Escola) were born in Spain.

Messi’s tally of 672 means the Argentinian has scored 7.1 per cent of the goals in the club’s history. That is the most anyone has ever scored at a single club in the history of top-level football, with Messi surpassing Pele’s 643 at Brazilian club Santos with his goal against Real Valladolid in December 2020.

That figure of 672 is also more than the number of votes George W. Bush beat Al Gore by in Florida (where Messi now lives) in the 2000 United States presidential election (537). At the time the state’s population was 16 million.

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Here is the breakdown of Messi’s goals for the club by season. He scored 50+ times in six different campaigns and won 35 trophies at Barcelona — averaging a piece of silverware every 22 games for them.

Barcelona’s 9,407 goals across well over a century have helped them win a total of 132 trophies, with 27 of those the Spanish top-flight title (including in its inaugural season in 1929) and five of them the European Cup/Champions League.

Barcelona have won the treble (league title, main domestic cup and European Cup/Champions League) twice — in 2008-09 and 2014-15. Bayern Munich (2012-13 and 2019-20) are the only other European side to have achieved this more than once.

Here is a breakdown of Barcelona’s trophies. Not all of these competitions were classed as competitive, but this is the Catalan club’s trophy cabinet in full.

Arch-rivals Real Madrid (36) are the only team to have won La Liga more often than Barcelona. Meanwhile, the Catalan club’s 31 triumphs in the Copa del Rey — Spain’s equivalent of the FA Cup — is seven more than second-placed Athletic Club from Bilbao.

Madrid (15), Milan (seven), Bayern (six) and Liverpool (six) are the only sides that have been European champions more times than Barcelona. In the Champions League era (1992-93 onwards), only Madrid have achieved this feat more often than the Catalan club.

Here is Barcelona’s finishing position in every La Liga season from 2000-01 onwards, with 11 of their 27 titles coming in the last 20 years (10 of them with Messi at the club).

As you can see, Barcelona haven’t ended a season outside the top three since a sixth-place finish in 2002-03. The last time Madrid did not finish either first, second or third was in the following campaign (2003-04) when the side then managed by Carlos Queiroz came fourth.

The last time Barcelona finished outside the top six was in 1941-42 when they came 12th (Spanish league football continued throughout the Second World War). Madrid last did so in 1976-77, when they came ninth.

Barcelona, Madrid and Athletic Club are the only teams to have played in every season of the Spanish top flight, which began in 1929.

Barca have competed in European football in 67 different seasons (counting editions of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup that spanned multiple campaigns as just one season). Only Madrid have played continental football in more campaigns.

Barcelona have had 73 managers in their history (including caretakers and counting those who did more than one spell multiple times), with 35-year-old Englishman Billy Lambe in 1912 the first (as player-manager). In total, 10 Englishmen have managed the club — with Bobby Robson, whose final game was the Copa del Rey final victory against Real Betis in June 1997, the most recent.

Here are the managers to have taken charge of the club in the most number of games.

Of those 11 managers, five also played for Barcelona — Johan Cruyff, Pep Guardiola, Luis Enrique, Ernesto Valverde and Xavi.

Barcelona’s biggest margin of victory in a competitive game is nine goals — a feat they have achieved on nine occasions, but just once since 1979.

Five of these games were in the Copa del Rey and four in La Liga. The league matches were the victories against Gimnastic Tarragona in 1949, Sporting Gijon in 1952, Real Oviedo in 1954 and Rayo Vallecano in 1979.

In that match against Sporting in 1952, Barca’s Hungarian forward Laszlo Kubala scored seven times — something that has not been matched in Spain’s top flight since. The only other instance of a player scoring seven times in a La Liga game came in February 1931, when Bata, a 22-year-old forward for Athletic Club, did so against Barca.

The match, which finished 12-1 to home side Athletic, is the biggest competitive defeat in Barcelona’s history. It is also the biggest loss any side has suffered in the Spanish top flight.

Barcelona conceded 43 goals in the league that season (in 18 games) with 28 per cent of them coming in that match under English manager James Bellamy. The Catalan club finished the campaign in fourth, just one point behind champions Athletic (two points were awarded for a win at that point). Yet despite such a narrow gap, the two team’s goal differences read: Athletic: 40, Barcelona: -3. The 22-goal swing from their game in the Basque Country had much to do with the enormous discrepancy.

Speaking of scorelines, probably the quirkiest stat in Barcelona’s history is that every time the club have played a competitive game during a papal conclave (when the College of Cardinals sits to elect a new pope) they have won the match 4-0.

This has happened three times — against Madrid in October 1958 and Las Palmas in October 1978 in La Liga and versus Milan in March 2013 in the Champions League. The elected popes? John XXIII, John Paul II and Francis.

Dani Alves is the oldest player to ever appear for Barcelona competitively — the Brazilian had just turned 39 when he made his final appearance for the club in 2022. At the other end of the scale, Lamine Yamal is the youngest player in the club’s history, breaking a record that had stood for 101 years when he made his debut in April 2023 at 15.

Eleven men have won the World Cup while at Barcelona, with seven of those doing so for Spain in 2010.

David Villa, who was Spain’s top scorer at the 2010 edition in South Africa, agreed terms with Barca the month before the tournament began but didn’t play for the Catalans until the start of the following season, after the tournament. He was therefore classed as a Valencia player on the squad list for the World Cup.

Romario won the Golden Ball at the 1994 edition for Brazil and Andres Iniesta scored Spain’s extra-time winner against Netherlands in the 2010 final.

Iniesta scores the winner in the 2010 World Cup final (Jeff Mitchell – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)

Goalkeeper Victor Valdes and Ousmane Dembele are the only two of the 11 who didn’t play in the final when their countries triumphed (though Dembele featured in the 2022 final, when France lost to Messi’s Argentina on penalties).

Barcelona players have won the Ballon d’Or on 12 occasions, with those wins achieved by six different players.

No club have had a player representing them win the prestigious award more often (Madrid also have 12), while Messi’s six wins as a Barcelona man is the most times any player has won the Ballon d’Or at one club.

Barcelona have come a long way from the amateur side created by a Swiss expat new to the city nearly 125 years ago.

Will the club be totally unrecognisable again on their 250th anniversary? Will anyone surpass Messi’s record number of goals? What scoreline will the next papal conclave bring?

Whatever happens, it won’t be without drama, excitement and lots more numbers.

(Top image: Artwork by Eamonn Dalton; Photos from Getty Images)