Bruno Fernandes breaks Premier League assist record and joins Lionel Messi and Thomas Muller in Europe’s top 5 leagues history

Bruno Fernandes brought the curtain down on his 2025-26 season with Manchester United in historic fashion, breaking the Premier League single-season assist record and joining an exclusive company in the process. The milestone has placed the Portuguese midfielder alongside Lionel Messi and Thomas Muller in the history books of Europe’s top five leagues.

After a disastrous previous campaign in which the club sank to the lowest Premier League finish in their history and missed out on European soccer entirely, United redirected all of their focus toward securing a return to the UEFA Champions League. Fernandes was the engine behind that mission, posting eight goals and 20 assists heading into the final matchday.

On Matchday 38, United traveled to Brighton with Fernandes needing just one more assist to break the all-time record. In the 33rd minute, he delivered a precise corner from the right that Patrick Dorgu met with a header to find the net, giving Fernandes the record-breaking 21st assist of his campaign.

With that, Bruno Fernandes became the first player in the history of the Premier League to register 21 assists in a single season, surpassing the long-standing benchmark of 20 shared by Thierry Henry with Arsenal in 2002-03 and Kevin De Bruyne with Manchester City in 2019-20.

Fernandes joins Messi and Müller in a league of their own

Fernandes wrapped up the 2025-26 Premier League season with nine goals and 21 assists, a campaign so dominant that he was named the Players’ Player of the Season for the first time in his career. Beyond the individual honor, his record-setting tally has placed him in a category occupied only by two of the greatest players of the modern era.

With 21 assists in the Premier League, Fernandes has become just the third player in the history of Europe’s top five leagues to reach that mark in a single season, joining Messi and Muller, who both achieved the feat during the 2019-20 campaign.

In the 2019-20 La Liga season, Messi delivered 21 assists alongside 25 goals for Barcelona, while Muller matched that assist total in the 2019-20 Bundesliga campaign, adding eight goals for Bayern Munich. Those figures had stood as the ceiling for any player across the continent’s elite leagues until Fernandes matched them on Sunday.

Single-season assist records across Europe’s top five leagues

• Premier League (England): Bruno Fernandes, Manchester United, 2025-26 — 21 assists.
• La Liga (Spain): Lionel Messi, Barcelona, 2019-20 — 21 assists.
• Bundesliga (Germany): Thomas Muller, Bayern Munich, 2019-20 — 21 assists.
• Ligue 1 (France): Angel Di Maria, PSG, 2015-16 and Jerome Rothen, Monaco, 2002-03 — 18 assists.
• Serie A (Italy): Federico Dimarco, Inter Milan, 2025-26 — 18 assists.