Lionel Messi holds the world record for the most football goals in a calendar year... or does he?!Reach for your tinfoil hats, brush off your Area 51 documents and whip out the ouija board because we've got some investigating to do.Now, it's entrenched in footballing lore that the 91 goals that Messi amassed across competitive games in 2012 is the most by any player between January 1 and December 31 of any given year.

Messi's 91 goals in 2012

In fact, the record is even enshrined by Guinness World Records as they note how Messi surpassed the previous feat of Gerd Muller when he smashed home 85 strikes back in 1972.

And given that you've probably heard a thousand commentators, fans and pundits talking about the record ever since, you'd be pretty safe in assuming that it's 1,000,000% true, right? Case closed, no questions asked.

Well, it seems as though things might not be that simple because as much as Messi has made into Guinness' iconic book, there is indeed another claimant to the record.

A rival claimant

In truth, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise because a record so broad can often lead to rival claimants.

Your seven foot, three inch tongue might have been ratified by Guinness, but who's to say that there isn't a keep's-himself-to-himself introvert swinging around a ten-foot tongue unnoticed in the mountain communities of Kyrgyzstan?!

Silliness aside, you get the broader point that we're trying to make here and the fact of the matter is that some sources consider Messi to only be second in the all-time calendar year goalscoring charts.

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Godfrey Chitalu's 109 goals

That's because the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS) celebrated the 50th anniversary of Godfrey “Ucar” Chitalu setting what they claim is the world record for the number of top-level goals scored in a calendar year.

They explain that the Zambian striker scored a head-spinning 109 goals in 1972, making him "the only player in the history of football who managed to score 100+ top-level goals in a year."

Chitalu played in eight official tournaments that year as he found the back of the net across the Zambian League, Castle Cup, Challenge Cup, Chibuku Cup, Charity Shield, African Cup of Champions Clubs and World Cup qualification.

All in all, the 109 goals were amassed in the space of just 50(!!!) matches with the seven goals that he also amassed that year in friendly and exhibition matches unable to be counted.

The IFFHS then went one step further in nailing their colours to the mast by listing Chitalu, who sadly died in a plane crash in 1993, above Messi and Muller in their historic top three for the record.

Which record is the right one?

Ok, so that's all well and good, but why, therefore, is Messi the man who's so often listed as the holder of the record? Well, it's kind of complicated, actually.

When Messi was heralded as the new world record holder in December 2012, Zambia's Football Association announced their plans to launch an official challenge to FIFA by fighting Chitalu's case.

The Guardian quotes a Zambian FA spokesperson as telling Soccer Laduma: "We have this record, which has been recorded in Zambian football, but unfortunately it has not been recorded in world football.

"Even as the world has been looking at Lionel Messi's record, breaking Gerd Müller's, the debate and discussion back here has been why Godfrey's goals are not being recognised.

"What we are doing is, we have commissioned an independent team locally to go back into the archives and record minute-by-minute each of those goals. The team that we have put together is going to calculate all of those goals, recording whichever game or tournament they were scored in.

"We will then send that to CAF [Confederation of African Football] and Fifa so that we can show that, while Messi's record is there, while Müller's record is there, the actual record holder in terms of goals per calendar year is actually an African. It's actually Godfrey Chitalu."

Barcelona's Lionel Messi celebrates his goal against Real Betis during their Spanish first division soccer match at Nou Camp stadium in Barcelona January 15, 2012. REUTERS/Gustau Nacarino(SPAIN - Tags: SPORT SOCCER)

As explained in a brilliant article by Bleacher Report, much of the research was conducted by Zambian football researcher Jerry Muchimba whose findings were significant enough to make the claim despite a lack of record keeping by the Zambian FA over the years.

What FIFA said about the matter

And to an extent, the case was given extra credence by the fact that FIFA came out and decided that they weren't going to recognise either Messi or Chitalu's claims to the world record.

FIFA spokesman Alex Stone told BBC Sport in 2012 that "it's not an official Fifa record," and elaborated by saying: "We don't have a database which details every football game played in every country from around the world since day one of their formation.

"It's certainly nothing to do with bias - if we can confirm records from our tournaments we like doing that. It's the sort of data fans and the media like to see."

FIFA even doubled down on this stance by tweeting in response to all the Chitalu comments: "Thanks for the questions about Godfrey Chitalu. Our official stats are limited to FIFA competitions, so we cannot verify this 'record'."

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But from there, the trail goes cold...

Which record is legitimate? You decide

At the end of the day, there is a strong claim to the contrary that Messi is not the word-record holder - one corroborated by the IFFHS, no less - and that's probably enough for us to pump the brakes a little bit when speaking about the Paris Saint-Germain star's 91 goals.

However, the extent to which Chitalu's goalscoring achievements can be ratified is clearly up for debate, even if it's pretty difficult to believe that it all would have been made up as some sort of elaborate lie or hoax.

Frankly, we need a lie down, so we'll let you decide which claim you consider to hold the record.