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La Liga wrap: Messi breaks record in Barcelona win

SoccerNews in La Liga 10 Mar 2013

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Barcelona forward Lionel Messi broke a world record in his club’s 2-0 win over Deportivo La Coruna in La Liga on Saturday.

Messi became the first ever player to score in 17 consecutive league games with a late goal in the win at Camp Nou.

The Argentine maestro now holds the record himself – overtaking Polish forward Teodor Peterek who scored in 16 straight Polish First Division matches in the 1937/38 season.

Messi has now scored an incredible 40 goals in 27 La Liga fixtures this campaign.

Barca – who lead the table by 14 points – were heavy favourites heading into the home clash against the bottom-placed Deportivo La Coruna.

And they took the luxury of leaving Messi, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and Gerard Pique on the bench as a result.

But Deportivo were good defensively and Barca were forced to wait 38 minutes to take the lead thanks to a strike from Chilean Alexis Sanchez.

Sanchez’s goal, created by Dani Alves, was all Barca had to show for their dominance and although the statistics – which showed them having eight shots on target to zero – were heavily weighted in their favour, they struggled to score a second goal that would have killed the game off.

Messi was introduced off the bench just after the hour-mark and fittingly, when Barcelona needed a goal, he delivered.

The pint-sized forward combined with Sanchez before dinking the ball over Deportivo goalkeeper Daniel Aranzubia and into the back of the net with two minutes remaining.

It was far from Barcelona’s best performance of the season but it was at least an immediate response to successive defeats against Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey and La Liga.

Other La Liga results on Saturday saw fourth-placed Malaga fail to win for the fourth match in a row.

Despite taking an eighth-minute lead through Argentine defender Martin Demichelis, Angolan Manucho equalised for Real Valladolid as the two sides played out a 1-1 draw.

Rayo Vallecano beat Espanyol 2-0 thanks to strikes from Alejandro Dominguez and Piti while an Alfaro double fired Mallorca to a 2-1 home success against Sevilla.

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