After playing together for 15 seasons at Barcelona and three seasons in Miami, Busquets and Messi played together for almost 18 years, making them the pair of footballers who have played the most games together
According to the International Federation of Football History and Statistics (IFFHS), Messi and Sergio Busquets played 653 official matches together, sharing the field between their time with the Blaugrana and Inter Miami.
Messi and Busquets, a duo that sets a new record
Busquets decided to retire at the end of the 2025 season having played a total of 653 official matches alongside Messi: 569 of which were with Barcelona, where they won multiple domestic and international titles. Later, in MLS, they added 84 additional matches with Inter Miami, consolidating a partnership that transcended Europe, winning multiple trophies in Spain, and later meant the first league title for the Herons in the United States.
The alliance officially began on September 13, 2008, when Busquets made his debut with the Blaugrana first team and coincided on the field with Messi. That day began an era that would mark modern soccer.
The figure is relevant because only official top-level matches are counted, and it is enough for both players to have participated in the same match, regardless of whether they shared exactly the same minutes.
Other historic duos
Playing 600 games as teammates is extremely rare. According to the IFFHS, only four other duos have achieved this mark:
Among them are Gerd Muller and Sepp Maier with 611 games, as well as Manuel Neuer and Thomas Muller, who also reached 611 games between Bayern Munich and the German national team. This figure could still increase and threatens the record of Messi and Busquets in the hypothetical and unlikely case that they were to play together again in the same team. Busquets himself also had an impressive number of games played alongside central defender Gerard Pique, reaching the number of 620 games, a figure reached after almost two decades at Barcelona, as well as in their shared call-ups for the Spanish national team. The same goes for full-back Jordi Alba, with whom he coincided not only in the national team and the Blaugrana team, but also in Miami.
Far from those numbers are Koke and Jan Oblak, for example, who have surpassed the 550-game mark together, but are still far from reaching record figures. The same is true of Koke and Griezmann.
These figures highlight the enormous partnership that existed between two players who marked an era in their respective positions: Busquets, one of the most recognized pivots of his time, for his simple, effective, elegant and pragmatic style; and Messi, with a more creative and goalscoring role as a false 9, or 10, in his most recent stage, thus complementing both styles of play.
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