Who is the soccer player that beat Lionel Messi?

Listen this article

The striker Sunil Chhetri became the second football player with the most goals scored in a national team

Sunil Chhetri is an Indian player, who, according to Transfermarkt, costs 275 thousand euros in the football market. Of course, this data does not reflect anything extraordinary about Chhetri, taking into account that his price does not even reach six figures.

Leer en español: Conozca al delantero que superó a Lionel Messi

Now, the soccer player is a legend of the football world, thanks to setting a new scoring record, with this, he surpassed the one and only Lionel Messi. According to Caracol Radio, on January 6, the athlete was established as the second best active goal scorer, in the world selection category. With two of the four goals scored by India against Thailand, for the first game of the group stage of the Asian Cup, Chhetri reached 67 goals with the national team, two more than Messi.

Another target for the player is Cristiano Ronaldo. The Portuguese retains this title thanks to the 85 annotations he has made wearing the Portugal shirt. Although Chhetri's talent is great in Asian football, the only impediment that could make him lose his target is his age: he is 34.

However, Chhetri already achieved an advantage over CR7, because his 67 goals were made in fewer games than it took Cristiano to reach that number, therefore "has a better average goalscorer," explained BBC.

In this way, the striker has also placed in the 20th position of the list of top scorers in history, ahead of Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast) with 25 goals, as well as Ronaldo Nazario (Brazil ) and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Sweden), both with 62 entries, according to information from the newspaper MARCA.

You may be interested: The heated debate between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi

One of the best in the world?

With all this, for many, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Chhetri deserves to be considered as one of the best football players of recent years, or at least, as one of the best strikers in the world.

"I would say that he (Chhetri) is India's Messi. He is a fantastic player, he keeps scoring on an international level and for his club on a regular basis. He has been a great player for India for I do not know how many years. I hope it continues to be that way," said India coach, Englishman Stephen Constantine.

But can a player who has not triumphed in the big leagues of the world be considered as important? In addition to playing in several clubs in his country, the footballer has only stepped on foreign turf with Kansas City (United States) and Sporting Lisbon (Portugal). In the first case, he could play only one game as a substitute, while in the second he only had the opportunity to act with the reserve team, according to the BBC.

The numbers say that Chhetri can rub shoulders with today stars, and with some of the history, however, this would only be from the figures. Nobody can deny that he could be considered as one of the "best internationals in the world" -as the BeSoccer website put it- although, in general terms, he could not sit at the same table as Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo.

Other "hidden" records

Just as Sunil Chhetri has stolen the attention of big football stars for himself for a few moments, during the history, not so well-known footballers have decided to leave their mark with records that even the best players in this sport have not been able to achieve.

For example, ABC He recalled that, in 1942, the French player Stephan Stannis won the astonishing 16 goals in a single game (against Aubury Asturie), while playing in Racing Club de Lens.

Also, UEFA details that the fastest hat-trick in the Champions League was not made by Cristiano or Messi, but Bafétimbi Gomis. The 33-year-old Frenchman achieved this record by scoring three goals in just 8 minutes, defending the colors of Olympique Lyon against Dynamo Zagreb on December 7, 2011.

LatinAmerican Post | Christopher Ramírez Hernández

Translated from: 'Conozca al delantero que superó a Lionel Messi'