The top goalscorers in the history of Football: All of these footballers have scored 500 goals or more playing at a professional level

There are 28 footballers who have scored more than 500 goals in their career, and remarkably, 3 of them are still playing. These are, without doubt, the top goalscorers in football history.

Some of the statistics are a little bit questionable, and also times have changed in terms of the number of games played, and the quality of the opposition etc. However, they’ve all scored a lot of goals and some of the greatest players ever rank highly on this list.

We found it hard to find the number of games played for all the players listed, but statistics vary wildly and are not inclusive of friendlies.

Updated Nov 2022 : We’ve tried to get as accurate as possible with Mesi and Ronaldo but info is conflicting! plus they keep adding to the totals!

1. Joseph Bican - 805 Goals in 530 matches

Joseph Bican played for both Austria and Czechoslovakia, as well as making one appearance (and scoring 3 goals) for Bohemia and Moravia. The stat we do know is 100% Kosher is that he scored 395 goals in 217 matches for Slavia Prague. He was also a very quick runner and was clocked at 10.8 seconds in the hundred metres. He scored the most goals of any professional past or present.

2. Romario - 772 Goals in 994 matches

Now he is a politician, but in his day Romario was fast, had a low centre of gravity and finished as often as he could by keeping the ball on the floor. He was the top scorer at the 1994 World Cup where he struck up a lethal partnership with Bebeto.

3. Pele - 767 Goals in 831 Matches

Many people consider Pele the greatest player of all time. He began playing for Santos at only 15 years of age and went on to become Brazil’s all-time leading goalscorer with 77 goals in 92 games, a record he still holds to this day. He won the World Cup three times, the only player ever to do so.

4. Cristiano Ronaldo - 819 Goals in 1140 matches*

One of three players on this list that are still playing football, Ronaldo will surely eclipse both Pele and Romario in due course. Currently playing for, well, just Portugal. Ronaldo scored 84 goals for Manchester United, 292 goals for Real Madrid and is on 102 international goals for Portugal at the time of writing.

5. Ferenc Puskas - 746 goals in 754 matches

Puskas scored 358 goals for Budapest Honved before moving to Real Madrid in 1958. 8 years later he would finish his career having scored 156 goals for Los Blanco’s. He scored 84 goals for his native Hungary but failed to get on the scoresheet in the 4 games he played for his adopted country of Spain. The Puskas award is named in his honour and is awarded to the player that scores the ‘most beautiful goal’ of the sporting year. Without a doubt, one of Real Madrid’s Greatest ever players.

6. Lionel Messi - 787 goals in 997 games

Now at PSG, after winning everything at Barca, Lionel Messi began his career in 2003 and shows no signs of stopping. He is currently on 444 goals for FCB and 70 goals at International level, having flirted with retirement from the Argentina side several times.

He has won the Ballon D’Or 6 times and will likely go down in history as the greatest player to have played the game, and is, without doubt, the Greatest Player in FC Barcelona History.

7. Gerd Muller - 735 in 793 games

‘Der Bomber’ was compact, powerful and had exceptional movement off the ball. He scored 398 goals for German giants Bayern Munich as well as 68 goals for West Germany. He also scored the winning goal in the 1974 World Cup final and is widely considered the best German striker of all time.

8. Ferenc Deak - 576 goals in an unknown amount of games

We couldn’t find much out about Ferenc Deak apart from he played around 380 games at club level and scored a crazy amount of goals for Szentlorinci AC, with 220 goals in 72 games. He also scored 200 goals for Ferencvarosi TC in just 3 years. A remarkable record but he didn’t seem to leave a remarkable legacy.

9. Uwe Seeler - 575 Goals in an unknown amount of games

There are many different stats about Uwe Seeler, but we know that he played all but 1 game, yes 1, for Hamburger SV. The only other club he played for was Cork Celtic, and in the one game he played for them in 1978 he scored 2 goals!

10. Tulio Maravilha - 575 Goals in an unknown amount of games

Tulio has played 594 games of football for a lot of clubs and never stayed with one club for very long! In fact his first club, Goias was where he played the most with 88 appearances that yielded 48 goals. He was the top scorer in Brazilian football on 3 occasions and has also played in Bolivia, the UAE, Switzerland and Budapest.

11. Arthur Friedenreich - 557 Goals in an unknown amount of games

Another Brazilian towards the top of this list and the one whose number of goals is most disputed. Arthur played in a time when Brazilian football was still amateur and therefore record-keeping was not top of their list of priorities. We do know that he was one of the first mixed-race players to play for major Brazilian clubs and faced a whole lot of racist stuff in his time.

12. Ernst Willimowski - 554 Goals in an unknown amount of games

‘Ezi’ played for both Poland and Germany on the international stage, scoring 21 goals for the former and 13 goals for the latter. Again stats seem to be a bit dodgy, but we know he scored 112 goals for Ruch Chorzow from 1934-1939 and a further 160+ goals in Germany after the 2nd World War. How the number of 554 is achieved I don’t think we’ll know… he also played Ice Hockey to a high level and played for Pogon Katawice.

13. Zlatan Ibrahimovic - 554 Goals in 935 games

Zlatan has scored goals wherever he has played in his career and is a larger-than-life character off the pitch. In club football, he has scored the most goals of his club career at PSG, with 113 goals in 122 appearances. He has also scored 62 goals for Sweden including an outrageous overhead kick from 30 years out against England in 2012.

Zlatan - Quite possibly the best goal you'll ever see.

14. Eusebio - 552 Goals in around 570 games

Again, statistically speaking there are a few anomalies, but we are going with the official goal count of 552. Eusebio is without doubt Benfica’s greatest son, and quite rightly, with 317 goals scored at the Estadio da Luz. Eusebio, who Alfredo di Stefano called ‘the best player of all time’ also scored 41 goals for Portugal in 64 games.

15. Jimmy McGrory - 550 goals in an unknown number of games

One of only 2 British players on the list, Jimmy McGorry scored 395 goals for Celtic between 1922 and 1937. He has scored more goals than anyone in British top-flight football, and also managed Celtic for 20 years until 1965. A Celtic man through and through and one of Scotlands Greatest Players.

16. Franz Binder - 546 Goals in around 700 matches

There is a statistic that says Franz Binder scored over 100 goals in his career, but some of these matches would have been friendlies and non-top flight matches. He played for both Austria (16 goals) and Germany (10 goals) at International level and played for just one club in his career, Rapid Wien.

17. Fernando Peyroteo - 544 goals in an unknown number of games

He spent his entire career at Sporting Lisbon, winning 11 trophies in a 12-year career, Peyroteo was born in Angola and returned there after his career was over, save for a stint as the manager of Portugal in 1961. He died young at only 60 years of age. He had a goal-to-game ratio of a goal every 1.68 games in Portuguese football.

18. Hugo Sanchez - 541 Goals in around 850 games

The best Mexican player of all time, Sanchez is one of the few brave people to have played for both Madrid clubs, scoring 54 goals for Atletico before moving to Real Madrid in 1985. He would go on to score 164 goals for Los Blancos before heading back to Mexico in 1992. He won the Pichichi award 4 seasons in a row between 1986-1990.

"When a player scores a goal like that, the match should be suspended and a glass of champagne offered to the 80,000 fans that witnessed it."

19. Fritz Walter - 539 Goals in an unknown number of games

Fritz Walter was the Captain of the German team that won the 1954 World Cup, and is rightly a legend in German Football. The main who played his whole career for Kaiserslauten was so revered by the club that the stadium they play in today is named after him. 33 goals for West Germany between 1940-1958 would likely have been added to if it were not for the 2nd World War.

20. Josef Takacs - 523 Goals in an unknown number of games

There really is very little information on Takacs, aside from that he scored a lot of goals for Ferencvaros and played for Hungary 32 times, scoring 26 goals. He also represented Hungary in football at the 1924 Summer Olympics.

21. Gyula Zsengeller - 522 Goals in an unknown number of games

He scored most of his goals for Ujpest FC (368) and is considered their greatest-ever player. He reached the World Cup Final with Hungary in 1938 and came second in the goal-scoring charts at that tournament. After he hung up his boots he had a long managerial career, mainly in Greece and Italy, looking after a dozen or so clubs in his 30 year career in the dugout.

22. Zico - 522 Goals in around 800 games

Perhaps the coolest name in football, Zico scored the bulk of his club goals at Flamengo where he had two stints between 71-83 and 85-89. He is one of the most legendary Brazilian players and was not an out-and-out striker by any means, making his record all the more remarkable. I doubt assist stats were kept when he started playing but he was a better passer than a finisher and is widely considered the complete player.

23. Alfredo di Stefano - 514 Goals in around 700 games

The King of Madrid, Di Stefano helped Real Madrid dominate European and Spanish competitions in the 1950s. He scored 216 goals for Madrid in an 11 year period. He is considered along with the likes of Pele, Cruyff and Maradona to be one of the best players to have played the game.

24. Hans Krankl - 514 Goals in about 700 games

A club legend at Rapid Wien, he had two spells there in which he amassed 267 goals. He also played for FC Barcelona where he won the Pichichi Trophy in the 1978-79 season, scoring 29 goals in La Liga.

25. Gunnar Nordhal - 513 Goals in an unknown number of games

Nordhal had scored over 200 goals in Swedish football before he was transfered to AC Milan in 1949. He went on to become AC Milan’s record goalscorer, a record he still holds, with 210 goals for the club.

26. Roberto Dinamite - 512 Goals in an unknown number of games

Vasco da Gama was where Dinamite played the majority of his career. He scored an unofficial total of 698 goals for the club but a great number of these were scored in friendlies. He had a short, 8-game stint at Barcelona but soon went back to Vasco where became Club President between 2008-2014.

27. Jimmy Greaves - 511 Goals in an unknown number of games

Tottenham Hotspur’s record goalscorer with 266 goals, Jimmy Greaves was one of England’s greatest-ever players. He scored 6 hat-tricks for the national side, for whom he scored a total of 44 goals. He also played for Chelsea, AC Milan and West Ham United.

Jimmy Greaves Tottenham Hotspur goals from old footage

28. Ferenc Bene - 508 Goals in around 600 games

Yet another Hungarian on the list, there must be something in the water. Ferenc won Gold in the 1964 Summer Olympics and also reached the semi-finals of the European Championships in 1964. He spend most of his career in Hungary and died in Budapest in 2005.

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