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As I'm sure you all know, the year is now drawing to a close, and many people like to reflect on the year past.  For Lionel Messi, that includes a record-breaking 91 goals in a calendar year.

 

The record that he broke, though, is also worth reflection. It was previously held by German forward Gerhard "Gerd" Müller, who in 1972 scored 85 goals.  That's right, his record stood for 40 years.

Messi's 91 goals were scored over 69 games, and if you're a Messi fanatic, here's a great website worshipping his accomplishments this year. It has plenty of graphs :)

Müller's 85 goals were scored over 60 games, and if you do the math, Müller, aka "Der Bomber" averaged more goals per game than Messi.  Müller is currently ranked tenth on the list of all-time international goalscorers, despite playing fewer career matches than any player featured in the top 25. He began his professional football career at the age of 18 in 1964. Müller quickly established his value as a striker and made huge appearances in the World Cup, scoring 10 goals in the 1970 games (earning him a Golden Boot*), and scoring the winning goal against Holland to see West Germany take the 1974 Cup.  In these two World Cup appearances, Müller scored a total of 14 goals, setting a record that would not be broken for 32 years.

Müller, far left, all old school and classy. He enjoyed wearing the number 13.

Just to put this in perspective, many records are broken fairly often.  Watch the Olympic Games and you'll see a new record being made in almost every race (track and swimming, for example).  So for a record to stand so far beyond anyone else's reach for 40 years, the person who set that bar is certainly the stuff of legend.

Müller, sometimes teasingly called "short fat Müller" by his earlier coaches and teammates still holds several national and league records, as well as the international record of 66 goals in 74 European Club games.  

And who knows whether Messi will challenge any more of Der Bomber's records.  Messi still has quite a career ahead of him.  Gerd Müller himself congratulated Messi on breaking the record this December, and commented that the Argentine's only fault as a footballer is that he doesn't play for Bayern Munich.

(Hallo to all my German readers...interestingly, I do have a fair number of pageviews from Germany. :D)

*For any soccer illiterates here, the Golden Boot award goes to the World Cup player who has scored the most goals in the tournament.  The last couple awards have gone to players who have scored only 5 goals, and the average number of goals scored by a Golden Boot player is 7.