Lionel Messi at Paris Saint-Germain: 32 goals in 75 games.

Messi's two years at Paris Saint-Germain are the least productive of his senior career by rate: 32 goals in 75 appearances, 0.43 per game, against 0.86 across seventeen years at Barcelona. The 32 goals are 4% of his career club total — the smallest share of any of his three clubs, and less than a third of what he has already scored at Inter Miami in a comparable number of seasons.

The numbers understate what the period contained, because the defining football of it was not played for PSG. He arrived on 10 August 2021 on a free transfer after 21 years at Barcelona, and the 2022–23 season that falls inside this stint brought 32 goals in 41 games across club and country at the age of 35 — the season in which he won the World Cup. A player's best year and his worst club goals-per-game rate overlapping exactly is unusual enough to be worth stating.

He won three trophies in Paris, the same number he has won at Inter Miami in a comparable span, and recorded 35 assists in 75 games — more assists than goals, which is true of no other stint in his career and says something about the role he played in that side.

The stint also contains the last Messi–Ronaldo meeting. On 19 January 2023, a PSG side beat a Riyadh All-Stars team containing Ronaldo 5–4 at the King Fahd Stadium: Messi scored after three minutes, Ronaldo scored twice. Six months later Messi left for Inter Miami and the two have not shared a pitch since.