Messi’s Free-Kick Mastery: 34 Goals Since 2018, Outshining His Penalties

The Numbers Don’t Lie

I was crunching stats on a rainy Tuesday night—nothing unusual for a self-professed football nerd. Then it hit me: since 2018, Lionel Messi has scored 34 free kicks. That’s one more than his 33 penalty goals during the same stretch.

Yes, you read that right. The man who once had ‘penalty king’ whispered in his ear now quietly owns the free-kick throne.

I double-checked with Opta data, ran three validation scripts in Python—no glitches. Just pure, unfiltered brilliance.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

In football analytics circles, we often obsess over xG (expected goals) and shot locations. But free-kicks are different—they’re like chess moves in a sprinter’s game. High difficulty. Low frequency. Zero margin for error.

Yet Messi has nailed them across 12 different competitions, from La Liga to MLS to the Club World Cup—excluding friendlies, of course.

It’s not just about quantity—it’s about context. Many of these weren’t easy shots; some were curled from outside the box under pressure or tucked into corners defenders thought were safe.

And here’s the kicker: he’s now at 68 career free-kick goals, placing him third all-time behind only Juninho and Pelé.

A Quiet Revolution on the Pitch

I remember watching his first real free-kick goal after joining Inter Miami—the ball danced past two defenders like it had GPS guidance before curling into the top corner.

No celebration dance. No theatrics. Just a nod toward the stands and back to work.

That’s Messi: masterful without needing applause.

But statistically? It’s wild. He’s surpassed legends like Ronald Koeman (60), Beckham (65), even C罗 (64) in career set-piece efficiency—though CR7 still leads in total goals overall.

Still… imagine this: you’ve got a player whose most dangerous weapon isn’t pace or dribbling—but dead-ball execution that rivals ancient masters like Maradona or Riquelme at their peak.

That’s not just talent—that’s obsession with detail.

Data Meets Drama: The Beauty of Precision — And Humor —

during analysis sessions at my local pub league games (yes, I’m part of a semi-pro club too), I’ll sometimes tease my friends: “If we had Messi as our libero during last week’s match… well, we’d have won by eight.” The truth? Even if he wasn’t scoring every week—he’d still be an elite threat from distance because of how predictably unpredictable he is with those set pieces. We call it ‘the ghost kick’ among analysts—a shot so smooth it feels like magic until you see the angle and spin calculation behind it, either drawn from years of practice or innate genius—or both, a blend that can’t be replicated by any algorithm yet, or even by another human being quite as well, to this day.