Messi breaks another La Liga record, but Barca struggle continues.

• News Highlights:

• Messi has record a remarkable 20 goals, while he has also provided 20 assists.

• Becoming the first la liga player to achieve the feat in one season.

• Also becoming the second player in Europe top 5 league to complete the 20-20 double after Arsenal Thierry Henry.

• Quique Setien rues the missed opportunity to rest players because of lack of goals in the first half.

Lionel Messi shattered yet more records as he became the first La Liga player to score 20 goals and register 20 assists in the same season.

The Argentine set-up Arturo Vidal’s winning goal in Barcelona’s 1-0 win over Real Valladolid at the Nou Camp.

Messi had already put up a career high 19 league assists but added another to further etch his name into the record books.

Xavi registered 20 assists in Barcelona’s 2008/09 treble winning season, but Messi has three games to surpass that number.

He becomes only the second player in Europe’s top five leagues to complete the 20-20 double with Thierry Henry also doing so for Arsenal in 2002/03.

Messi’s pass for Vidal was the game’s standout moment and, momentarily at least, cut the gap to Real Madrid to one point.

It will take Los Blancos to slip up twice for the Catalans to win the league title.

And Quique Setien admitted in the post-match comments, having left Luis Suarez out of his starting XI, that he couldn’t afford to rest his talisman.

“Of course,” Setien said when asked whether Messi needed a rest. “I’ve said it before, but the score was too tight.

“If we’d have scored more goals in the first half, maybe more players would’ve been rested. The team was tired.

“They had players up front with quality and committed men forward. We couldn’t cover the whole pitch. We had to drop back and that made it more difficult for us.

“We should’ve put the match to bed in the first half – we could’ve scored two or three goals. [There was] the anxiety of knowing that you’re only 1-0 up and that they can score at any moment.

“In the second half, we struggled. We noticed fatigue in some players to a point.”