Lionel Messi was at his usual brilliant best during the 2019/20 season.While Barcelona as a team struggled to reach the heights expected of them, their Argentine talisman was scoring and assisting goals for fun.Messi notched 25 goals in La Liga as he secured his seventh Pichichi award, but it was his creative numbers that stood out even more.The 33-year-old registered 21 assists in the league, the most by a player in the history of top-flight Spanish football.There isn't a forward on the planet who can do it all quite like Messi and it'll come as a shock to absolutely no one that the Argentine is the European Player of the Season.
Statistics website WhoScored have handed Messi an overall rating for 2019/20 of 8.71, putting him comfortably ahead of Kylian Mbappe (8.14) in second place.Robert Lewandowski (8.13), Kevin De Bruyne (7.97) and Cristiano Ronaldo (7.82) make up the rest of the top five.
Amazingly, it's the ninth time in 11 seasons that Messi has been crowned by WhoScored as the best player in Europe.
Current Barcelona teammate Luis Suarez scooped the accolade in 2013/14 following his ridiculously productive season in the Premier League with Liverpool, earning an overall rating of 8.43 in the process.
Then in 2016/17, Messi was actually outdone by Neymar during their time together in Catalonia.
In 39 games across La Liga and the Champions League, the Brazilian scored 17 goals and contributed with 19 assists, earning an overall rating of 8.52.
Messi finished second in WhoScored's 2016/17 rankings with a rating of 8.47, the Argentine scoring 37 goals in just 34 La Liga games that season.
All of this means Ronaldo has never won the award, which does seem a tad bizarre given the Portuguese's exploits in La Liga, Serie A and Champions League over the past decade.
In the 2014/15 season, the 35-year-old superstar scored 48 league goals for Real Madrid, but Messi was still named as Europe's top dog.
The Argentine's superior passing and dribbling stats clearly count for a lot!