L’última Dansa: Pep Guardiola's Final Season in Barcelona: Part 2

InPart One of this series, I went over Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona's success leading up to the 2011/12 season, in addition to the disappointing transfer window and injury problems, which led to tactical and structural alterations. Although this gave Barcelona an element of unpredictability, it led to a lack of consistency in performances and results and forced Barcelona to rely more heavily than ever before on a 24-year-old Lionel Messi.

La Pulga had one of the greatest individual seasons in the history of sport, scoring 50 goals in La Liga and 73 goals in all competitions, both of which are records for players in Europe. He also broke another Champions League record for the most goals scored in a single match, putting 5 goals past a 20-year-old Bernd Leno, who was starting in goal for Bayer Leverkusen during the second leg of their Round of 16 tie. That record would last just two years, when Shakhtar Donetsk's Luiz Adriano matched his feat by scoring five goals in a group stage match against BATE Borisov.

There are plenty of individual accolades and accomplishments that Messi racked up during the 2011/12 season (for a complete list of his achievements,read this), but the most impressive feat was his availability. Messi appeared in 60 of the 64 matches that Barcelona took part in, nine more than goalkeeper Victor Valdés. He was the lifeblood of the Blaugrana side's attack; while Messi scored 73 goals in all competitions, the second-highest scorer on the team -- a tie between new arrivals Alexis Sánchez and Cesc Fàbregas -- mustered just 15.

Eventually, Leo’s half-century of league goals wasn’t enough to lift Barcelona to a fourth consecutive league title. While Barcelona did amass an astonishing 91 points (the 12th highest points tally of all time), their efforts were superseded by José Mourinho's Real Madrid, who finished with a league record 100 points, 121 goals and a goal differential of +89, and dazzled with one of the deadliest counterattacks in football history.