Lionel Messi wins La Liga player of the month for the first time as Barcelona given second winner in three months

Only two Barcelona players have won the award since its inception in 2013 despite the club winning La Liga last season

Barcelona forward Lionel Messi has won the La Liga player of the month for the first time (Getty Images)

Barcelona forward Lionel Messi has been named the La Liga player of the month for January.

While the news is hardly ground-breaking given the Argentine’s extensive list of accolades, the incredible fact is that Messi has never won the award until now, with a Barcelona player only winning being heralded as the league’s best player for a calendar month last November when Neymar won the award.

The fact that Messi had not won the player of the month gong during his career will astound many, although it must be added that it was an award that was created in September 2013 for the start of the 2013/14 season.

Still, it meant that the five-time Ballon d’Or winner had been beaten 22 times despite being standing as the second-highest goalscorers in La Liga throughout the past two-and-a-half years, with only Cristiano Ronaldo scoring more goals during that time period.

Messi scored six goals in five La Liga outings last month, which included the opener in a 2-1 win over title rivals Atletico Madrid and a hat-trick against Granada.

La Liga Player of the Month winners

Month	Year	Player	Club
September	2013	Diego Costa	Atletico Madrid
October	2013	Koke	Atletico Madrid
November	2013	Cristiano Ronaldo	Real Madrid
December	2013	Carlos Vela	Real Sociedad
January	2014	Ivan Rakitic	Sevilla
February	2014	Rafinha	Celta Vigo
March	2014	Keylor Navas	Levante
April	2014	Diego Godin	Atletico Madrid
May	2014	Diego Godin	Atletico Madrid
September	2014	Nolito	Celta Vigo
October	2014	Karim Benzema	Real Madrid
November	2014	Carlos Vela	Real Sociedad
December	2014	Luciano Vietto	Villarreal
January	2015	Antoine Griezmann	Atletico Madrid
February	2015	Alberto Bueno	Rayo Vallecano
March	2015	Vitolo	Sevilla
April	2015	Antoine Griezmann	Atletico Madrid
May	2015	Cristiano Ronaldo	Real Madrid
September	2015	Nolito	Celta Vigo
October	2015	Borja Baston	Eibar
November	2015	Neymar	Barcelona

However, despite Barcelona enjoying two winners in the space of three months, they still trail runaway leaders Atletico who have seen four of their players win the award a total of six times, with both Antoine Griezmann and Diego Godin taking the accolade twice along with successes for Koke and former striker Diego Costa.