Former stars from Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Real Madrid are featured among the five active players with the highest goal tallies in football history. While scoring goals is one of the toughest challenges in football, these players have consistently found the net with remarkable ease throughout their careers.
5. Karim Benzema – 508 goals
The French player left Real Madrid in 2023 as the club’s second-highest goalscorer, with an impressive 354 goals. Remarkably, he only won one La Liga Golden Boot during his 14 years in Spain. Although his scoring record puts him among the greatest goalscorers ever, Benzema contributed much more than just goals. His link-up play was outstanding, and the partnership he created with Cristiano Ronaldo is still talked about today.
Incredibly, he had his best scoring season at 34 years old, netting 44 goals in the 2021-22 season, which earned him the Ballon d’Or. Now at 36, he is scoring for Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia, and he likely aims to reach 600 goals before he retires.
4. Luis Suarez – 578 goals
Often considered the best striker of his generation, Suárez had the ability to score nearly any kind of goal during his prime. Throughout his career, he has consistently been a prolific goalscorer at every club he’s represented.
His highest-scoring season occurred during his second year at Barcelona, where he netted 59 goals in all competitions and earned the European Golden Shoe. Now at 37, he continues to find the back of the net regularly in MLS. Since joining Inter Miami, he has maintained an impressive average of a goal every 110 minutes.
3. Robert Lewandowski – 685 goals
Lewandowski’s amazing consistency stands out, showing his ability to keep performing at a high level longer than any other player on this list. Over the last 13 years, the Polish forward has averaged an incredible 38 goals per season at the club level.
Having already scored over 100 goals with Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich, he is now aiming to do the same with Barcelona, needing just 32 more goals to reach that mark in Spain.
He has done really well under Hansi Flick, scoring 92 goals in 81 matches during two times with the German coach, averaging a goal every 75.6 minutes.
2. Lionel Messi – 843 goals
At 37 years old, Messi continues to score goals easily, showing his mastery of football while still having a few more great years ahead of him. He has reached an impressive total of 843 goals for both club and country, along with 375 assists during his career. Messi also holds the record for the highest-scoring individual season on this list, having scored 73 goals for Barcelona in the 2011–12 season alone.
In 2022, Pep Guardiola praised Messi, saying, “For me, I’ve said many times, he’s the best. It’s hard to understand how a player can play at the level he has over the last 50 or 70 years.” It seems unlikely that we will see another player of Messi’s level in our lifetime, even though he has been surpassed for the top spot on this list.
1. Cristiano Ronaldo – 904 goals
What’s amazing about Ronaldo is that he has become even better at scoring goals as he gets older. Since turning 30 in February 2015, he has scored 441 goals in 521 matches, which is really impressive.
Ronaldo has said he wants to reach 1,000 career goals before he retires, and with the way he’s scoring at Al-Nassr, that milestone is probably not far off. “I want to reach 1,000 goals,” he mentioned on his YouTube channel. “Staying injury-free is really important to me; that’s my main goal. I want it.”
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