Lionel Messi might not hold world record almost everyone thinks he does

Lionel Messi holds the world record for the most football goals in a calendar year… or does he?!

Reach for your tinfoil hats, brush off your Area 51 documents and whip out the ouija board because we’ve got some investigating to do.

Now, it’s entrenched in footballing lore that the 91 goals that Messi amassed across competitive games in 2012 is the most by any player between January 1 and December 31 of any given year.

In fact, the record is even enshrined by Guinness World Records as they note how Messi surpassed the previous feat of Gerd Muller when he smashed home 85 strikes back in 1972.

And given that you’ve probably heard a thousand commentators, fans and pundits talking about the record ever since, you’d be pretty safe in assuming that it’s 1,000,000% true, right? Case closed, no questions asked.

Well, it seems as though things might not be that simple because as much as Messi has made into Guinness’ iconic book, there is indeed another claimant to the record.

In truth, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise because a record so broad can often lead to rival claimants.

Your seven foot, three inch tongue might have been ratified by Guinness, but who’s to say that there isn’t a keep’s-himself-to-himself introvert swinging around a ten-foot tongue unnoticed in the mountain communities of Kyrgyzstan?!

Silliness aside, you get the broader point that we’re trying to make here and the fact of the matter is that some sources consider Messi to only be second in the all-time calendar year goalscoring charts.

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That’s because the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS) celebrated the 50th anniversary of