Lionel Messi collects 7th Pichichi Award; says winning LaLiga crown remains 'priority'

Barcelona FC captain Lionel Messi chose to deflect attention from his historic 7th Pichichi Trophy win, to talk about his team's LaLiga ambitions and his thoughts on the season gone by. The Argentine legend picked up his seventh Pichichi trophy on Monday, December 21, after finishing the last season of the league as the top scorer with 25 goals from 33 games. While this proved to be a league record, taking Messi above Telmo Zarra as the most frequent Pichichi awardee in history, some of the satisfaction of winning the honour and breaking the record was robbed from Messi as his team failed to win the LaLiga title.

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Lionel Messi Pichichi award

Named after Athletic Bilbao forward Rafael Moreno Aranzadi, aka Pichichi, the trophy is awarded each year, to the highest goalscorer of the LaLiga. Speaking to Marca after his record-breaking win, Messi said that his personal goals were never the priority and that he "would prefer to win La Liga before getting [his 8th] Pichichi". He said that the team was "fighting towards" reclaiming their title from Real Madrid and that he the 8th Pichichi, "is not something I am worried or obsessed about". Talking about what Barca need to do to make it to the top this season, Messi said that: 

“We are going to try and win everything, as is always the case with this club. We are improving little-by-little. It’s true to say that it took us a little while to get going in LaLiga. We shouldn’t have dropped so many points. I think we deserved more in the games against Alaves and Gefate, and also against Real Madrid at the Camp Nou. In those three games we created a lot of goalscoring chances, and if we had converted them, the situation in those games would have been different."

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Adding to this, the 33-year-old said that the team needed "to have a streak of good results in a few games order to move up the table", something that he believes, is taking time due to the COVID-19 restrictions. Messi also talked about playing empty stadiums and much the sport had changed due to the pandemic. "The truth is football has changed a lot, and it’s difficult for everyone, but step-by-step things will settle.”

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Barcelona news and LaLiga standings 

Messi and his Barcelona side will have to script a fightback in the new year if they want to avenge their title loss from last season. Barca are currently in 5th place in the LaLiga standings with 21 points. This puts them 8 points behind joint leaders Real Madrid and Atletico, five behind Real Sociedad and four behind Villareal. So far, Messi has scored just six times from 13 outings for the side. 

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Image Credits: FC Barcelona Twitter