Messi, Neymar, Mbappe: Stats rank Europe's top 30 players so far

Lionel Messi means business this season.

Let’s be honest, Messi didn’t enjoy the most spectacular of debut years at Paris Saint-Germain, remarkably failing to make the list of Ballon d’Or nominees having notched six goals in Ligue 1.

However, when you’re talking about arguably the greatest sportsperson to have ever lived, you just know that they’re going to bounce back from a tough year at the office – and boy is Messi doing exactly that.

In fact, the Barcelona legend is just three games into the French top-flight season and he’s already amassed half the amount of goals that he mustered across 26 outings in the competition last time out.

But it’s more than just the goals that have shimmered across Messi’s first four games this season because frankly, every aspect of his game seems to have been fine-tuned back to the levels we saw from him latterly in Catalonia.

The 37-year-old seems well and truly plugged in to the Neymar and Kylian Mbappe dynamic, continues to blow everyone away with his creative brilliance and is never more than a few minutes away from humiliating an opponent.

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And while, yes, it is of course still early days in the campaign, the evidence so far would suggest that Messi could be right back in the Ballon d’Or hunt by the time that 2023 rolls around.

Don’t believe us? Well, the proof is in the pudding because Messi is currently ranked by statistics as the second-best player across Europe’s top five leagues this season, according to WhoScored.

The popular data gurus use a series of metrics to award every player in those divisions a rating out of 10 for each game they play, which can then be averaged out