Lionel Messi is, by some distance, the peak goalscorer in the history of El Clasico, finding the back of the net 26 times for Barcelona in competitive games against Real Madrid .
All of those goals have been lawsuit for celebration and Messi surely refined his actions over the years, with a deeply agreement of the hostility between the sides helping him to know precisely how best to get under the skin of the Catalan golf club ‘s perennial rivals .
His ill-famed shirt celebration of 2017 at Santiago Bernabeu is arguably his most iconic, given the circumstances leading up to it, and it spawned a phone number of mimics, not to mention memes. So what was the celebration and what inspired it ? GOAL brings you everything you need to know.

What was Lionel Messi’s shirt celebration vs Real Madrid?

On April 23, 2017, Lionel Messi scored a last-minute goal to secure a 3-2 victory for Barcelona against Real Madrid at Santiago Bernabeu. The goal was Messi ‘s five-hundredth for Barca and he celebrated by whipping off his jersey and holding the english showing his diagnose and number up to the Madrid fans .

naturally, the twit was not particularly well received among madrid fans, but an iconic Clasico moment was therefore etched into the annals of history .
It was actually Messi ‘s moment goal of the game, with his first being a 33rd-minute counterweight which cancelled out Casemiro ‘s undoer. Barca then took the lead in the 73rd moment and looked to be on naturally for victory until James Rodriguez struck with five minutes left on the clock. however, Messi broke Madrid hearts in blockage fourth dimension when he latched on to a apt Jordi Alba cut-back base on balls and placed the ball beyond the strive of Keylor Navas .
There was a humble price to pay for opting to rub salt into the wounds of the Real Madrid players and fans, with referee Alejandro Hernandez brandishing a chicken card to the Argentine for removing his new jersey .

Lionel Messi Barcelona 2017 celebration Real Madrid

What inspired the Messi shirt celebration?

While Messi ‘s celebration against Real Madrid was decidedly unusual – rare, no doubt due to the fact it now carries a penalty of a scandalmongering card – the Argentina external was not the first football player to hold up their shirt at fans .
It is not clear where precisely Messi got the mind from, but it is potential that he may have been inspired by former Barcelona caption Ronaldinho, who memorably held up his shirt to fans after scoring a goal for Paris Saint-Germain in a Classique victory against Marseille in 2002 .
Others had besides brandished their jersey as a celebration before Messi and could well claim to have been the source of divine guidance. Another brazilian, Juninho Pernambucano, for model, took off his shirt and held it up to fans after helping Lyon kill Marseille in 2009.

The brazilian association to the celebration continued when real Madrid full-back Marcelo held his jersey up after scoring in the 2014 Champions League final examination win against Atletico Madrid .

Who has copied Messi’s shirt celebration?

The image of Messi rebelliously holding his jersey up to Real madrid fans beamed across the world and, naturally, prompted enough of emulations .
possibly most notably, Cristiano Ronaldo wasted little time in copying it in the future Clasico meet a few months later, in August of that year, when he scored in the Super Cup at Camp Nou .

Cristiano Ronaldo Real Madrid celebration 2017 Barcelona While Madrid won 3-1 on that affair, the celebration earned Ronaldo a jaundiced circuit board and he then picked up a moment yellow card for a sensed prima donna, resulting in a send off .
Brazil international Richarlison appeared to emulate the Messi celebration in 2019 in a Carabao Cup peer for Everton against Lincoln City, though his version is slenderly different in that he holds the jersey with the club badge facing the push .
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In a Twitter military post afterwards, Richarlison wrote : “ Play for the name on the front of the shirt and they ‘ll remember the diagnose on the back .
Nabil Fekir copied the shirt celebration a few months after Messi did it in 2017 when he held his jersey aloft after scoring for Lyon in a bowler hat couple against St Etienne. The move sparked a ferocious reaction from the fans, who invaded the pitch in response .
Fekir ‘s act of defiance transformed him into something of a cult bomber for Lyon supporters, who have since paid protection to the France international with a mass display of shirts equally well as a massive tifo depicting the ill-famed 2017 moment .