La Liga Top 10 Goal Scorers in a Season: Lionel Messi Keeps Scoring Record Over Cristiano Ronaldo

By Damon Salvadore First Posted: May 26, 2015 10:54 AM EDT

It was another unbelievable year for both Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

The two best players in the world combined for an amazing 91 goals this La Liga season. Ronaldo led the league in goals with 48, but Messi had the last laugh as his squad won the Spanish League Championship for the 23rd time in franchise history. Messi has now won seven la Liga titles in his career.

Ronaldo won the Pichichi Trophy for leading the league in goals this season, the third of his career.

Either Messi or Ronaldo have led the league in goals every year since the 2008-09 season when Diego Forlán found the net 32 times for Atletico Madrid. Historically speaking, Messi and Ronaldo are the only players to ever score at least 40 goals in a La Liga season.

Either Ronaldo or Messi hold the top six most goal prolific seasons of all-time. The most the two have ever combined for in a season is 96, during the 2011-12 season. In other words, Messi and Ronaldo own the Spanish record books.

This year Ronald had a very good chance at breaking Messi's single season goal record. He recorded hat tricks in the last two games, but a mid-season slump and missed games (one from suspension) was just too costly to overcome. Messi holds the single season record for goals with 50, a mark he set with Barcelona in the 2011-12 season. Both Messi and Ronaldo have led the league in scoring three times. Telmo Zarra led the league in scoring six separate seasons, the most of all time.

Alfredo di Stéfano of Argentina and Hugo Sánchez of Mexico each led the league in scoring five times, the most ever by a Latin American-born player.

Ronaldo's biggest slump this season came during Week 20-27. During that time period Ronaldo scored just two goals. This season Ronaldo scored 48 goals in 35 games. That's a 1.371 goals per game average. In the 2011-12 season, Messi scored 50 goals in 37 games, missing just one match all season. Messi averaged was 1.351 goals per game that season.

Messi may not have scored as many goals as Ronaldo this year, but he scored an extremely impressive 43 goals. His 43 goals rank as the fifth most in La Liga history, behind only himself and Ronaldo.

Messi is just 27 years old while Ronaldo is 30. These two superstars won't be going anywhere for a longtime and until then, many more records will be broken. Messi and Ronaldo are not only rewriting the record books for the regular season, but all-time as well. Messi has the most career La Liga goals with 286 while Ronaldo sits in sixth place with 225. Ronaldo is just 26 goals away from second place on the all-time scoring list.