WORLD RECORD INCREASED !
Most experienced partnerships: Messi & Busquets’ record stands at 653 games
In 2025, Lionel Messi and Sergio Busquets increased their world record for most career games played together to 653. This total comes from 569 games they played together for Barcelona and 84 for Inter Miami. The record got its final mark following Busquets' decision to retire at the end of the last MLS season.
Busquets is also part of a partnership (with Gerard Piqué) that previously held the record (620 games played together, including 87 for Spain and 533 for Barcelona).
Remarkably, Busquets played for the first time with both Piqué and Messi on the same day (13 September 2008).
Only four pairs in football history have played 600+ games together. In 2025, the Bayern pairing of Manuel Neuer and Thomas Müller reached this milestone.Their combined appearances stood up at 611 following Müller's departure from Bayern. However, both are still active, so it's still theoretically possible they could cross paths at another club.
Only top-level matches are taken into account.
The match is counted for a pair if both players were on the pitch (not necessarily at the same time).
| TEAM-MATES | WITH MOST | GAMES PLAYED | TOGETHER | ||
| Partner 1 | Partner 2 | Games | First Game | Last Game | |
| 1 | Sergio Busquets | Lionel Messi | 653 | 13/09/2008 | 06/12/2025 |
| 2 | Sergio Busquets | Gerard Piqué | 620 | 13/09/2008 | 05/11/2022 |
| 3 | Gerd Müller | Sepp Maier | 611 | 14/08/1965 | 10/02/1979 |
| 4 | Thomas Müller | Manuel Neuer | 611 | 03/06/2010 | 05/07/2025 |