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Lionel Messi owns an absurd number of records at Barcelona, and Raphinha has begun the 2026-27 season in a way that makes a few of them look at least slightly less impossible to reach.

The Brazil international has found the net in every match he has played so far, scoring eight goals in five games, and he is flourishing as a No.9 after Barcelona lost Robert Lewandowski and Ferran Torres and were unable to sign Julian Alvarez in the summer.

With that explosive start to 2026-27, here are seven extraordinary Messi records that Raphinha can now attempt to challenge.

Messi more than doubled the previous best scoring streak in La Liga, set by Ronaldo Nazario in 1996-97 with 10, when he scored in 21 straight appearances during the 2012-13 campaign.

Remarkably, that sequence saw the eight-time Ballon d'Or winner score against all 19 of the other clubs in La Liga. Nobody else in the history of European football has come anywhere close to matching that.

Raphinha only needs another 18 matches to get there.

Here is one that looks more realistic.

This is a Barcelona-only record rather than an outright competition mark. Messi scored well over 100 Champions League goals and sits second in the all-time standings, but his personal best of 14 in 2011-12 is only the joint seventh-highest total for a single season.

Raphinha struck twice in Barca’s opening game of 2026-27 and still has seven league-phase fixtures to play, including matches against Sabah, Galatasaray, Sporting and Como, before the knockout rounds even begin.

With the competition now expanded, it would be no surprise if Cristiano Ronaldo’s overall record of 17 goals for Real Madrid in 2016-17 is surpassed in the next few years. Raphinha could well be one of the players in the running.

Messi posted an average rating above 8.00 under WhoScored’s statistical algorithm in every season from 2009-10 to 2020-21. Twelve straight years of outrageous consistency.

For context, only one player in the whole of La Liga managed that last season: Lamine Yamal, with 8.23. Even that figure was below Messi’s lowest mark in that run, which was 8.34 in 2013-14.

If Raphinha can sustain the level needed to threaten Messi’s best-ever WhoScored average rating of 8.88, recorded in 2011-12, it would signal an exceptional individual season.

At present, Raphinha is not too far away, having posted 8.72 in the 2026-27 campaign so far. He simply has to maintain that level, or improve it slightly, over the next 34 matches. Easy enough.

This is the major one. Messi scored an astonishing 50 goals in the 2011-12 La Liga season. That remains the all-time record across Europe’s five major leagues.

Clearly, asking Raphinha to get close to that number is a huge stretch, but he has made a strong opening, currently topping Europe’s scoring charts with six goals in only four league appearances.

Project that rate of 1.5 goals per game across a full 38-match season and the Brazilian would finish with 57 La Liga goals.

The usual warnings apply, of course. Small sample size. Take it with a pinch of salt. Naturally.

It is no surprise that Messi was regularly producing huge hauls in the season when he reached 50 goals in 2011-12.

That year, he scored eight hat-tricks in La Liga, and that is still the record.

Raphinha has not managed one yet, so he has ground to make up. But now that he is operating as a centre-forward, with players such as Anthony Gordon, Lamine Yamal, Fermin Lopez and Pedri around him, he should surely collect a few this season.

Messi’s barely believable 2011-12 campaign, when Barca somehow did not even win the title, is doing plenty of heavy lifting here.

But it was actually in the following season, when Barcelona took the league title back from Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid by equalling their record tally of 100 points, that Messi set the mark for the most matches scored in.

The Argentinian found the net in 27 of Barca’s 38 league games that season.

Considering Raphinha is currently four from four, this one does not feel entirely impossible. That is assuming he stays fit, of course, which is admittedly a significant condition.

Now for the same idea as above, but across all competitions. Arguably even more absurd.

Along with his 50 La Liga goals in 2011-12, Messi scored 73 in all competitions. That is an all-time record in the full history of European football, seven more than Ferenc Deak and Gerd Muller managed in Hungary and Germany in the 1940s and 1970s respectively.

So far, Raphinha has eight goals in five matches across all competitions. If he keeps that pace over roughly 50 games in all competitions, he would get there.