Lionel Messi has hit numbers across his career so absurd that opponents have struggled to find the words for them.
Didier Drogba, one of European football's most feared strikers of the past two decades, sits at the centre of one of the most astonishing Messi stories of all.
The former Chelsea striker recalled how the London club's players reacted when Roberto Di Matteo, Chelsea's manager at the time, showed them the goal tallies of Barcelona's players before the two sides met in the semi-finals of the 2012 Champions League.
Drogba told the tale in his autobiography. It shows just how hard Messi's numbers were to take in, even for players used to facing the best in the world.
Sport newspaper published Drogba's comments, in which he said: "I remember this story well. Di Matteo, Chelsea's manager at the time, was doing what he always used to do, showing us a list of the opposing team's top scorers. Usually names such as Wayne Rooney, who had scored 22 goals, or Robin van Persie, who had scored 15 goals, and so on, would appear."
Every match week brought the same routine, with the Italian keen for his players to know exactly where the danger would come from. Then came Pep Guardiola's Barcelona, and the numbers triggered a reaction nobody saw coming.
Drogba continued: "When the Barcelona list appeared, Xavi was third with 14 goals. In second place came Alexis Sanchez and Cesc Fabregas, level on 15 goals each. But we all started laughing when the name of the team's top scorer appeared on the screen, Lionel Messi, with 63 goals, including 14 in the Champions League."
According to Drogba, the chasm between Messi and his team-mates left the Chelsea dressing room caught somewhere between disbelief and laughter.
Nobody was mocking the Argentine. Far from it. His numbers simply looked impossible.
The Ivory Coast legend said: "63 goals that season? It was such an exaggerated figure that we looked at each other, unable to believe it, and then we started laughing. What else could we have done? I even took a picture of the number of goals, because it really did seem crazy to me."
The story lands even harder when you remember how that season finished. Messi ended it with 73 official goals for Barcelona, 50 of them in La Liga, a historic record in the competition. He then closed out 2012 with 91 goals for Barcelona and his national team, breaking the previous record held by Gerd Muller.
