Lionel Messi scored four goals in Barcelona's win over Osasuna today, making him the eighth player to score 200 career goals in La Liga play. Here are five more notes on Messi's latest historic accomplishment...

* Messi is the first player to reach 200 La Liga goals since Raul did so in 2008. Before Raul, the previous player to top 200 was Mexican legend Hugo Sanchez in 1990.

* At 25 years and 217 days, Messi is by far the youngest player to score 200 La Liga goals. He's over four years younger than Telmo Zarra was when he scored his 200th goal for Athletic Bilbao in 1951.

* But Zarra did score 200 La Liga goals in the fewest games. Zarra needed only 219 games to get there, 16 fewer than Messi played. Messi played the second-fewest games with 235, 15 fewer than the previous second-best, Alfredo di Stefano with 250 matches.

* Of the eight players to score 200 La Liga goals, Messi is the third who was born outside of Spain. Sanchez is the foreign-born leader with 234 goals, followed by Di Stefano with 227. Di Stefano was born in Argentina before moving to Spain and acquiring Spanish citizenship later in his career.

* At Messi’s career rate of 0.86 goals per game, Messi would break Zarra’s record of 251 La Liga goals in the seventh game of the 2014-15 season. in the FOURTH game of the 2014-15 season. But at Messi’s rate of 1.43 goals per game over the last two seasons, he would need 35 games to reach 252 goals. That would be the 18th game of next season, less than a year from today."

Many thanks to @2010MisterChip for his assistance with this post.

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