Lionel Messi has pulled further away from Cristiano Ronaldo in the battle of the direct free-kick specialists. The Argentine’s latest set-piece goal, scored for Inter Miami, took him to 76 direct free kicks in his career, while Ronaldo remains on 64. The gap between the two is now 12 goals.
The strike came in Inter Miami’s 2-1 defeat to Columbus Crew. Messi took a free kick from a tight angle and beat the goalkeeper to make it 1-1 temporarily. The parity did not hold: Jamal Thiaré scored in added time to hand the home team the victory.
It was Messi’s sixth direct free-kick goal of 2026. Earlier in the year he had already scored from that route against New York City, Jordan, Montreal on two occasions, and San Diego.
What makes the current standing remarkable is how different the picture looked not so long ago. In 2016, when Ronaldo reached 50 free-kick goals, Messi had 32, an advantage of 18 for the Portuguese. From that point on the numbers swung sharply: Messi has added 44 direct free kicks to his tally, Ronaldo just 14.
Ronaldo’s own free-kick record helps explain how the statistic was overturned. In 2011, at the height of his time with Real Madrid, he averaged one direct free-kick goal every eight matches and finished that year with a wide advantage over Messi, who managed only four goals from that route. In the years that followed, Ronaldo went on to score only one or two free kicks per season, while Messi kept closing the gap until he reversed it.
The crossing point arrived in 2021. Messi began that year with 48 free-kick goals to Ronaldo’s 47, and from then on he gradually widened the distance. Five years later the difference stands at 12 goals in Messi’s favour. Between the two ends of the comparison, an 18-goal lead for Ronaldo has become a 12-goal lead for Messi, a 30-goal swing.
Messi is also closing on the top of the all-time ranking of free-kick scorers. The ranking used by Infobae places Marcelinho Carioca first with 78, leaving Messi two short of that figure. He has already surpassed the records attributed to Jair Rosa Pinto on 74, Roberto Dinamite on 73 and Juninho Pernambucano on 72.