The strength of the teams Messi has scored against

A very interesting question when it comes to goalscoring is the strength of the teams they have scored against. This is, of course, a very difficult thing to measure, but in this entry, I'll show two ways in which we can measure their strength.

The first way, which is quite popular, is top sides of their leagues (top 3, top 5, etc.). 8.87% of Messi's goals in La Liga have been against the top 3 sides, 14.6% has been against the top 4 sides, 19.95% has been against the top 5, 24.6% has been against the top 6 sides, and finally, 43.9% of his goals have been against the top 10. In the bottom tier, 18.18% has been against the bottom 3, 30.6% against the bottom 5, and 54.5% of his goals came against the bottom 10. Not bad stats, but let's get into the next one.

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This one is my personal favorite, not only because it includes the Champions League as well, but because it's much more specific as well, having ratings. The method that I'm talking about is Elo ratings, which have a very big database of games where they get their ratings from there. If we take this method, Messi has scored against teams with an average Elo rating of 1740.39, which is comparable to Lyon or Russia, and that hypothetical team would be 35th in the world club-wise or 39th in the world nation-wise. Not bad at all.

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As we can see, Messi has scored on average against relatively good sides, which is very surprising considering how many goals he has scored, but that's just Messi for you guys.