Messi primed to take goalscoring honour

Lionel Messi looks destined to end the season with at least one more accolade as he leads the UEFA Champions League top scorers' list going into FC Barcelona's final meeting with Manchester United FC in Rome.

Final reckoning
With eight goals to date, the Argentine marvel is set to take the crown from Cristiano Ronaldo, who edged Messi into joint second place in last season's rankings, with the Portuguese registering eight strikes ahead of Messi, Didier Drogba, Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, all of whom scored six. This time around, it would take something extraordinary for the 21-year-old to miss out. The only players on the leaderboard who will feature in the final in Rome are Messi's team-mate Thierry Henry, who has scored five, while United's top scorers - Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov - have scored four each.

Goals-per-hour ratio
Messi's goals have been spread over 837 minutes of action this season, with the two players directly below him in the rankings boasting a better record in terms of goals per hour. Miroslav Klose's seven for FC Bayern München came in 654 minutes - a rate of a goal every 93 minutes or so - while Gerrard reached the same total for Liverpool FC in just 557 minutes, or approximately once every 79 and a half minutes. None of the players who scored more than twice in this season's competition could match him in that regard.

All-time best
Messi will have the chance to improve his total in the final, but his chances of matching the all-time European Champion Clubs' Cup record of 14 goals in a single season, shared by José Altafini (AC Milan, 1962/63) and Ruud van Nistelrooy (Manchester United FC, 2002/03) are largely theoretical. Miracles notwithstanding, he will nonetheless become the first Argentine to be the top scorer in Europe's premier club competition since Alfredo di Stéfano took the honour with ten goals for Real Madrid CF in the 1957/58 edition. Ominously for United, the top scorers in the previous two editions of the UEFA Champions League - Kaká in 2006/07 and Ronaldo last season - ended up on the winning side in the final.