El Clasico officially belongs to Lionel Messi.
Messi captained Barcelona to a fourth consecutive league win away at the home of Real Madrid last night, with the 1-0 win taking the Blaugrana 12 points clear of their bitter rivals and 10 points clear at the top of the La Liga.
But there was extra significance in the victory last night as Barcelona have now moved ahead of Los Blancos in the head-to-head.
Barca now have 96 wins to Real's 95 in the historic fixture and they owe a lot to their talisman for helping initiate the turnaround because the numbers were very different before he burst onto the scene.
As per stats guru Mister Chip, prior to Messi's debut in 2003, Barca had just a 19 per cent win ratio away at the Bernabeu.
Advert
Fast forward to the present day and the Catalan outfit have a 55 per cent win ratio in away games against Real. Even more impressive is the fact that Barca's El Clasico record was 66 wins to Real's 87 before Messi came along and now with his help, they now lead the way.
Though he wasn't able to add to his El Clasico goalscoring tally last night, Messi is still the top scorer in the history of the fixture by quite some distance - having bagged 26 goals across La Liga, Spanish Super Cup and the Champions League.
And in addition to having some serious beef with Sergio Ramos in Barca's 1-0 victory, he also allocated time to mug off Gareth Bale and Dani Carvajal on separate occasions.
Lionel Andres Messi is undoubtedly 'the King of El Clasico'.
Featured Image Credit:Topics: Football News, FC Barcelona, Football, El Clasico, Messi, Lionel Messi, Santiago Bernabeu, Real Madrid, La Liga
