Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Trent Alexander-Arnold have all earned respective places in 2020's Guinness World Records as a number of other footballers all take their places for individual achievements.
We'll start with the English representation and it's been a decent year for Liverpool's TAA. Challenging for the Premier League title, winning the Champions League, and now he's an official world record holder having achieved a record-breaking number of assists by a defender in the Premier League, eclipsing the record held by Everton duo Andy Hinchcliffe (94/95) and Leighton Baines (10/11) who had been tied on 11 since 2011. Trent bagged 12 in the Premier League, 16 overall.
"It's an honour," Alexander-Arnold said of his inclusion. "I've always wanted to go forward and help the team to create as many chances as possible. It's obviously down to the lads to put the ball into the back of the net, because football is a team game and without them this record wouldn't be possible."
The boyhood Liverpool fan clearly attributes a large amount of his success to his teammates, and in particular, fellow fullback Andy Robertson, with whom he shares a very healthy rivalry – Robertson achieved an impressive 11 assists in the Premier League. "He probably thought he had the competition wrapped up! Near the end of the season we both hit really good form, we were both getting lots of assists and it was good to help the team in those games that we needed to win," Alexander-Arnold said of Robertson.
Leo Messi is no strange to breaking records and he takes his place in the 2020 edition by extending his all-time La Liga goals record to an astounding 420. Other honourable mentions from the footballing world include Kylian Mbappé becoming the youngest player to be nominated for the Ballon D’Or (18 years, 293 days), Anja Mittag becoming the all time leading goalscorer in the UEFA Women’s Champions League (51), and Ada Hegerberg winning the first women’s Ballon d’Or.
Shane Long also fires his way into the records by scoring the fastest ever Premier League goal (7.69 seconds), Joao Felix became the youngest player to score a hat-trick in the UEFA Europa League (19 years, 152 days), and Sam Kerr scored the most regular season goals in the National Women’s Soccer League (63).
