Lionel Messi Comments on El Clasico 2016, 500th Goal and La Liga Race

Barcelona superstar Lionel Messi has said it would be extra sweet to score his 500th career goal against Real Madrid in Saturday’s Clasico showdown between the two Liga giants.

After a wonderful 2016, the 28-year-old finds himself perched on the 499-goal mark, with an impressive 21 of those coming against Barcelona’s biggest rivals.

And speaking ahead of the clash at the Camp Nou, Messi has conceded that one more against Los Blancos and a subsequent victory would make for a perfect day.

“It would be a nice moment to reach that figure against Real Madrid,” said the five-time Ballon d’Or winner, per Goal.com. “It would be nice to win to stretch our advantage.”

Daniel Ochoa de Olza/Associated Press

Messi is the all-time top scorer in the history of this illustrious fixture, leading names like Alfredo Di Stefano, Raul and Cristiano Ronaldo, the man who’ll be on the opposite side to him on Saturday.

Here is a look back at some of his standout moments against Real from years gone by:

His goalscoring overall has been staggering. Sport (h/t barcastuff) recently documented how Messi’s goals have been accumulated year by year:

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499 career goals Messi, per year since 2005: 3 - 12 - 31 - 22 - 41 - 60 - 59 - 91 - 45 - 58 - 52 - 25(ongoing) #fcblive [via sport]

— barcastuff (@barcastuff) March 31, 2016"

This game is always a must-watch occasion. Both Real and Barca are home to some of the best players in the world, the long-standing and storied rivalry makes for a feisty 90 minutes, and both sets of fans are always keen to provide a spectacular backdrop when their enemies come to town.

That’ll be no different on Saturday, even though Barcelona are 10 points clear of their rivals and nine ahead of Atletico Madrid in the race for the title. It’s a buffer that has been put in place due to some wonderful football from the Catalan giants, who are on a 39-game unbeaten run coming into this fixture.

Richard Heathcote/Getty Images

Much of that is due to the form of Messi and his attacking team-mates Luis Suarez and Neymar. The latter two have been outstanding this term as well, with their high point coming earlier in the campaign when the duo ran Real ragged in a 4-0 win at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Here’s how that attacking threesome compares to Los Blancos’ trident of Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema in 2015-16, per MisterChip:

After only being on the bench when these two sides met last year, Messi will be itching to take to the field in this one.

There’s a lot of focus on the collective quality of this Barcelona side, and that’s been vital to their success, but it’d certainly be a special moment for the world’s greatest player to reach such an incredible landmark in the biggest game on the continent.

Real will be smarting after their surrender on home soil last year, and head coach Zinedine Zidane will surely have a plan to make things a lot more even this time.

But even for a side like the capital club, stopping Messi is extremely difficult, as they’ve found to their cost on a number of occasions before.