About 191 million pair of eyes all around the world were on five-time Player of the Year Lionel Messi as he stood over the ball from the penalty spot in the World Cup match versus Iceland on June 16, 2018. His country needed him to save them from the pain of drawing with an underdog in their World Cup opener.

Messi’s eyes gazed at space, away from any of the corners of the net, away from keeper Hannes Thor Halldorsson. He stared there for seconds that seemed like an eternity with a calm yet uneasy look in his eyes, a look that showed that the whole weight of Argentina was on his shoulder.

The FC Barcelona superstar paced to the ball, taking those tiny strides millions of sports fan are fond of, opened his hip to pummel the ball with his left foot.

Halldorsson dove on his left and blocked the Argentine’s penalty. It was the 24th spot kick Messi missed and surely one of the misses that stung the most.

Argentina drew with Iceland 1-1, the 31-year-old was in tears after the match.

Fast forwarding to Saturday, Messi was in a similar situation. Barca was tied 1-1 with underdog Rayo Vallecano in the 51st minute and the Rosario native yet again found himself standing at the PK spot.

Obviously, it was just a La Liga game and not the World Cup so there was less pressure. Messi took his familiar tiny strides and confidently hit the ball to the bottom right corner of the net. Barcelona won the match 3-1.

According to Transfer Markt, the forward has scored 83 penalties in his career and missed 25.

As known, some of his 25 misses were in crucial matches. As mentioned Messi missed a PK in the 2018 World Cup versus Iceland, he also failed to score from 12 yards out against Chile in the PK shootout of the 2016 Copa America Centenario final.

Nevertheless, the Barca captain has also converted some critical penalties for the Albiceleste side. He scored a penalty in the last World Cup qualifiers against Chile in March 2017 to lead his country to a 1-0 victory. Messi also netted from the spot versus Paraguay in the 2015 Copa America in a match that ended 2-2.

But his major PK misses, as in the World Cup and the 2016 Copa America final, overshadowed the important penalties the South American has netted. In a Barca jersey, Messi doesn’t have the best stats when it comes to scoring critical PKs either.

He failed to score from the spot against Chelsea in the Champions League on March 24, 2012. The Blaugrana side ended up losing 3-2 on aggregate to the Blues. Messi also missed a penalty in the Copa del Rey against Valencia in 2012 and in the 2018 edition of the competition against Espanyol. FCB lost that match 0-1 but did win the second leg to advance to the next round.

PKs have been one of the few flaws of the mega superstar. He even told AS that he’d “like to be better at penalties.”

After all, with penalties, you make some and you miss some. Very few star players never missed a PK if not any.

As of now, the last spot-kick Messi took was a successful one, it gave the Spanish champions a 2-1 lead over Rayo.