{{Lionel Messi has signed a two-year contract extension with Barcelona, which will tie him to the Spanish club until June 2018.}}<\/p>\n
The Argentina international, 25, enjoyed a record-breaking year for club and country, scoring 91 goals in 2012.<\/p>\n
Messi signed a new deal on Thursday afternoon and follows Carles Puyol and Xavi, who both signed their extensions last month. Defender Puyol and midfielder Xavi agreed new deals until 2016.<\/p>\n
A statement on the Barcelona website said, \u201cthis afternoon Leo Messi extended his contract with FC Barcelona through June 30 of 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe signing ceremony was attended by the player, President, Sandro Rosell, Vice-President, Josep Maria Bartomeu and the Director of Football, Andoni Zubizarreta.<\/p>\n
\u201cMessi added two additional years to his existing contract, which was set to expire in June of 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe player, who joined the club when he was 13 years old and made his first-team debut three years later, will be 31 when his contract expires.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barcelona is top of La Liga with a nine-point cushion over nearest rivals Atletico Madrid. They are away to AC Milan in the last 16 of the Champions League on 20 February.<\/p>\n
Messi has been in the best goal-scoring form of his career and surpassed Gerd Mueller\u2019s 40-year-old record of 85 goals scored in a calendar year with a brace in a 2-1 win over Real Betis on 9 December.<\/p>\n
Messi had agreed the contract at the end of last year but has only just signed it.<\/p>\n
He has scored eight times in Barcelona\u2019s first five La Liga matches of the calendar year, including four against Osasuna in a 5-1 win on 27 January.<\/p>\n
Last month he was awarded the Ballon d\u2019Or for a fourth year running ahead of Barcelona teammate, Andres Iniesta and Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Lionel Messi has signed a two-year contract extension with Barcelona, which will tie him to the Spanish club until June 2018.}} The Argentina international, 25, enjoyed a record-breaking year for club and country, scoring 91 goals in 2012. Messi signed a new deal on Thursday afternoon and follows Carles Puyol and Xavi, who both signed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5733"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5733"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}