Wikipedia-compiled totals
These numbers power the live counter, charts and breakdowns.
Source
Club and international goals come from the "Club career statistics" table on the English Wikipedia article for Lionel Messi (Lionel Messi).
How we scrape
A server-side parser reads the HTML table, maps rows to competitions, and sums goals and appearances. Friendly and youth matches follow the same table rules as the published Wikipedia total row.
Refresh
Each app caches results for a few minutes, serves the last good payload instantly, and refreshes in the background. Failed scrapes keep the previous numbers until the next successful run.
B-team exclusion
Reserve and youth sides (names ending in B, II, Reserves, etc.) are excluded from senior career totals so the counter matches Wikipedia's main career line.
Fallback
On cold start, a committed JSON fallback ships with the build so the first visitor still sees real figures while the first live scrape completes.
Editorial copy
Everything below is written by us, not scraped.
What is editorial
FAQs, GOAT essays, quotes round-ups, net-worth summaries and comparison verdicts on messi.fyi are maintained manually and may use external sources cited on those pages.
Limits
Wikipedia can lag a day behind a match; our cache adds a short delay. For disputes, check the linked Wikipedia revision and use Contact if our parser missed an update.