- Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are the two highest-scoring men’s football players in history, and they can both still add to their respective records.
- Joe Bambrick, an unfamiliar name to many, holds the 11th spot on the list with a career total of 616 goals.
- Eusebio, Gerd Muller, Josef Bican, Romario, Pele and Ferenc Puskas also feature among the highest-scoring men’s football players in history.
Football has produced some of the best athletes the world has ever seen over the years, but the players who capture the public imagination best tend to be those who are capable of scoring goal after goal on the biggest stage. Be it at World Cups, in the Champions League, the Premier League, or any other major competition, glory is so often reserved for those who step up and stick the ball in the back of the net when it matters most.
The game’s greatest goal-getters have been made up of prolific poachers, aerial artists and talented technicians. They have been spread across the last century, sharing little in common aside from the shape of the ball which has invariably ended in the back of the net.
Soccer is a sport where fans have enjoyed countless world-class finishers. Putting aside points for style and success, here is a list of the sport’s best scorers based purely on the number of goals they racked up for club and country.
Only goals from domestic and international football at the highest level are considered. Anything from the second tier or below is ignored.
| Highest-Scoring Men’s Football Players | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | Player | Nationality | Career Goals |
| 1. | Cristiano Ronaldo | Portugal | 900* |
| 2. | Lionel Messi | Argentina | 838* |
| 3. | Pele | Brazil | 762 |
| 4. | Romario | Brazil | 755 |
| 5. | Ferenc Puskas | Hungary, Spain | 729 |
| 6. | Josef Bican | Austria, Czechoslovakia | 720 |
| 7. | Jimmy Jones | Northern Ireland | 647 |
| 8. | Robert Lewandowski | Poland | 635* |
| 9. | Gerd Muller | Germany | 634 |
| 10. | Eusebio | Portugal | 619 |
| 11. | Joe Bambrick | Northern Ireland | 616 |
| *Ronaldo, Messi and Lewandowski are still playing | |||
Best all-time goalscorers image gallery
11 Joe Bambrick
616 career goals between 1926-1943
An unfamiliar name features first on this list. Joe Bambrick scored at an alarming rate, managing 616 goals in official matches throughout his career. The Northern Irishman once scored 50 times in a single league campaign for Linfield, in 1930/31, and also played for Glentoran, Chelsea and Walsall.
Bambrick netted the only goal for the Blues in their 1-1 draw with Arsenal in October 1935, which just so happened to be the club’s highest-ever attended match at Stamford Bridge with 82,905 watching on from the stands. On the international stage, he made just 11 appearances for the Ireland national football team (which selected players from the whole of Ireland until 1950) but scored 12 goals, including six in one match against Wales.
10 Eusebio
619 career goals between 1957-1978
The ‘Black Panther’, as Eusebio was otherwise known, played for nine clubs and scored a total of 619 goals across his career, but he is best remembered for petrifying defences in the red of Benfica. For the Eagles, he netted an astonishing 473 goals in just 440 games, helping the side to 11 Portuguese titles and the 1961/62 European Cup.
Eusebio also scored goals in Mozambique for Sporting Clube de Lourenco Marques, as well as in Mexico, the USA and for other clubs in Portugal. For his country, he scored 41 in 64 matches. His Golden Boot-winning display at the 1966 World Cup secured his side a bronze medal, which remains their best-ever finish in the competition. He also scooped the Ballon d’Or award in 1965.
9 Gerd Muller
634 career goals between 1964-1981
Gerd Muller may not have been the most technical or elegant centre-forward to grace the game, but he made being in the right place at the right time an art form, and that is shown by his remarkable 634 career goals. ‘Der Bomber’ is Bayern Munich’s record goalscorer with 523 goals, and is the top Bundesliga goalscorer in the competition’s history, boasting 365 strikes.
Only Miroslav Klose has scored more for Germany, and Muller is also third on the all-time list of World Cup marksmen. He saw out his career with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, scoring 38 times in 71 NASL outings and hung up his boots with four Bundesliga titles, four German Cups, three European Cups, a World Cup, a European Championship, and the 1970 Ballon d’Or under his belt. Quite the trophy cabinet.
8 Robert Lewandowski
635 career goals from 2005 to modern day
Robert Lewandowski’s father predicted big things for his newborn son. Lewandowski Sr chose ‘Robert’ so his son’s name would be easy to recognise and pronounce for an international audience. Countless commentators certainly owe him a debt of gratitude considering how frequently they have had to scream his child’s name in recognition of yet another goal.
During his time at Bayern Munich, Lewandowski’s teammate Thomas Muller revealed the Pole’s fitting nickname of ‘LewanGOALski’. Whatever you want to call him, one of the greatest strikers in Champions League history had a slow start to life in the Bundesliga before hitting his stride at Borussia Dortmund in 2011. Lewandowski managed to extend his staggering peak for more than a decade with a dedicated approach to nutrition and training, searching for any fine margin to gain. The Barcelona striker is so detail-orientated that he sleeps on his left side to protect his favoured right leg.
7 Jimmy Jones
647 career goals between 1947-1964
Surprisingly, Jones is the second Northern Irishman to appear on this list with 647 goals. He spent most of his career in his homeland and was close to unstoppable. His best spell came at Glenavon, where he topped the Irish League goalscoring charts in six separate seasons across an 11-year period. Jones remains the leading goalscorer in the history of Irish League football.
He won a total of 17 trophies across his time with Belfast Celtic and Glenavon. Jones was also prolific in Wales and elsewhere in his homeland. At Belfast Celtic, he netted 27 goals in 19 matches before having his leg broken by a Linfield supporter during an encounter between the two sides. That incident kept Jones on the sidelines for 15 months after leg-saving surgery, making his feats even more remarkable.
6 Josef Bican
720 career goals between 1931-1955
Whether in Austria, his country of birth, or Czechoslovakia, his adopted homeland, defences found Josef Bican to be a constant menace. He remained prolific even during the Second World War when many of his football rivals were on the battlefields.
He did once claim that he had netted more than 5,000 times, which is a little fanciful, but among Bican’s undisputed achievements are his three seven-goal haul matches, his streak of strikes in 19 consecutive top-tier games and his five years back-to-back as the world’s leading goalscorer – a record that still stands to this day. He also remains Slavia Prague’sall-time leading scorer.
5 Ferenc Puskas
729 career goals between 1943-1966
To get an idea of how good Ferenc Puskás was, he once led Hungary to a 7-1 thrashing of England back in 1954. The attack-minded player was the star of the show that day, scoring two of his 729 official career goals in a stunning performance.
‘The Galloping Major’, as he was affectionately known, first earned prominence at Budapest Honved, where he was the Hungarian first division’s top scorer on four occasions. Then in 1956, he joined the first incarnation of Real Madrid’s Galacticos and dominated Europe alongside the likes of Francisco Gento, Alfredo Di Stefano and Raymond Kopa.
During his time in the capital, he won five consecutive La Liga titles and three European Cups. Unsurprisingly, he is still Hungary’s record goalscorer, and FIFA even named a trophy after him in 2009, with the scorer of each year’s best goal receiving the Puskas Award.
4 Romario
755 career goals between 1985-2007
Ronaldo eventually became the face of Brazilian football in Europe, but Romario paved the way for his natural successor. The striker turned out for 10 clubs, including PSV Eindhoven, Barcelona and Valencia, and netted an astonishing 755 goals across his career. Although it is with his first two clubs that he is best remembered.
A strong record for Vasco da Gama convinced Dutch side PSV to secure his services, and Romario repaid their faith, scoring almost a goal a game across five seasons. He helped PSV to three league titles and KNVB Cups in that time as well. He then fired Barcelona to the 1994 La Liga crown and continued to strike a healthy goalscoring rate back in his homeland and across the globe later on in his career. Only Neymar, Pele, and Ronaldo have scored more for Brazil than ‘Baixinho’ (The Little One).
3 Pele
762 career goals between 1957-1977
The king of football, Pele is still, for some, the greatest football player of all time and boasted 762 official goals throughout his glittering career. His heyday of the 1950s and 1960s, before records were meticulously kept, makes it challenging to keep track of all his goals – with many believing he actually scored over 1,000 times in his career – but we do know he is Santos’ record goal-scorer.
Twelve of Pele’s 77 Selecao strikes came at the World Cup, of which he won three – a record that is unlikely ever to be matched, never mind surpassed. Other than a short spell as the star attraction of the NASL with New York Cosmos, Pele spent his whole career in his homeland, where he also won six Brazilian Serie A titles and two Copa Libertadores trophies. The legendary striker held the world record for most goals scored for about 30 years until a new era dawned.
2 Lionel Messi
838 goals from 2004 to modern day
Two men have dominated the goalscoring charts for the bulk of the 21st century. The first of the duo on this list is Argentina maestro Lionel Messi. ‘El Pulga’ (The Flea) has picked up a record six European Golden Shoes throughout his career, is Barcelona and La Liga’s record goalscorer, while no other player in history has managed more than his 91 strikes in a calendar year, achieved in 2012.
He also leads the way in terms of goals for his country, and his performances have been recognised by eight Ballon d’Or wins. And to think all that would not have come to pass without growth hormone treatment, as his short stature as a child threatened to derail his future professional career. In 2022, Messi’s dream came true as he won the World Cup for the first time in his career, netting seven goals in Qatar and picking up the Best Player award.
1 Cristiano Ronaldo
900 goals from 2002 to modern day
His rival Messi may have more Ballon d’Or awards, but Cristiano Ronaldo can console himself with his status as the most prolific goalscorer the planet has ever seen. No player has ever scored as many goals for Real Madrid (450 strikes in 438 games), and he also leads the way for Portugal. In fact, Ronaldo’s haul for his country is more than any other male player at international level.
He has now found the back of the net a total of 900 times throughout his illustrious career and won three Premier League titles, five Champions League crowns and Euro 2016, to name just a few of his many trophies. Despite entering the final year of his 30s in 2024, the former Juventus and Manchester United star has shown he still has much to give for both club and country, having scored more goals than anyone else in the calendar year of 2023, striking 52 times for Portugal and Al-Nassr.