Which players have scored the most goals ever? The top goalscorers in football history
Tom Hancock
Some players, it seems, were just born to score goals for fun, putting up some truly astonishing numbers in that department.
Here, we take a look at the top 10 goalscorers in football history, according to the Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation’s (RSSSF) list of the most prolific goalscorers in official matches (correct as of 19th July, 2026).
The top 10 goalscorers in football history
10. Romario (785 goals)
While Romario’s claim to have scored over 1,000 goals includes friendlies, testimonials and youth matches, his officially documented total of 785 is still firmly within the realms of prolific.
The Brazilian great, who helped his country to glory at the 1994 World Cup, found the net more than 100 times for three different clubs: Dutch giants PSV Eindhoven, and iconic Rio outfits Flamengo and Vasco da Gama (his boyhood club) in his homeland.
A league champion in the Netherlands, Spain and Brazil, ‘Baixinho’ (Portuguese for ‘The Little One’) racked up 55 international goals in 70 caps between 1987 and 2005.
9. Abe Lenstra (790+ goals)
The bulk of Dutch legend Abe Lenstra’s playing days came before the professionalisation of football in the Netherlands, but that can’t take away from his standing as one of the country’s all-time greats.
Averaging comfortably over a goal a game during a near two-decade long stay with hometown club Heerenveen, Lenstra was named Dutch Sportsman of the Year in 1951 and 1952.
Unfortunately, he never played at the World Cup – the Netherlands didn’t qualify during his international career – but he still more than made his mark for the national team, notching 33 goals in 47 appearances.
8. Ferenc Deak (795+ goals)
Ferenc Deak isn’t the first Ferenc you tend to think of when it comes to Hungarian footballing icons, but he was almost exactly as lethal in front as goal as his namesake (we’ll come to him).
Deak averaged almost 1.5 goals per game for Hungary, sadly ending his international career shortly before the ‘Magical Magyars’ dismantled England at Wembley in the ‘Match of the Century’ and reached the 1954 World Cup final.
But he made perhaps an even bigger impact at club level – certainly with his first club, Szentlorinci, for whom he amassed 386 goals at a scarcely believable average of exactly two a game.
7. Ferenc Puskas (802 goals)
And then we get to unquestionably one of the finest players ever to grace a football pitch anywhere: Ferenc Puskas, destroyer of England and many more besides.
Arguably the game’s first truly global superstar, Puskas banged in 84 goals in 85 games for Hungary and struck almost 250 times in less than eight years at Real Madrid – where he won three European Cups.
A 1952 Olympic champion, the 1954 World Cup player of the tournament, and captain of that immortal Hungarian team, Puskas – who notched more than 400 goals at an average of over one a game for his first club, Budapest Honved – wasn’t even an out-and-out centre-forward. Simply extraordinary.
6. Jimmy Jones (840+ goals)
An Irish League champion once with Belfast Celtic and three times with Glenavon, Jimmy Jones scored for fun from the beginning of his career during the Second World War right up until retiring in the mid-1960s.
The Keady-born striker famously hit a hat-trick in 1953 as an Irish League XI beat a Football League XI 5-3 at Belfast’s Windsor Park, and later briefly represented Northern Ireland.
Jones might have brought his potent attacking abilities to England – a registration technically meant he couldn’t feature for Fulham’s first team after signing in 1950 – but his impact on home soil cannot be understated, not least for Glenavon, for whom he plundered 74 goals during the 1956/57 season.
5. Ronald Rooke (940+ goals)
Surrey-born Ronald Rooke’s epic career lasted three decades – he was pushing 50 when he finally hung up his boots after a spell with non-League Bedford Town – spanning over 1,000 official games and producing at least 940 goals.
In the Football League, Rooke was prolific for Crystal Palace, Arsenal – starring in their 1947/48 First Division title triumph – especially Fulham, for whom he kept playing during the Second World War while working as a physical training instructor in the RAF.
A wartime international for England, Rook later served as player-manager for Palace and Bedford, among others.
4. Lionel Messi (948 goals)
The GOAT? We’ll leave that for you to decide, but Lionel Messi is one of two active players on this list, passing the 900-goal mark earlier this year while playing for Inter Miami.
Argentina’s 2022 World Cup-winning captain – who momentarily sat as the all-time leading World Cup goalscorer this summer, before Kylian Mbappe eventually wrestled that honour away from him – is one of just three player to rack up a century of international goals, retiring from duty last month having struck 125 times for his country.
At club level, the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner bagged the bulk of his goals during a record-setting 17-year stay with Barcelona, where he won it all and left as their record scorer by many country miles (672 goals in 778 games).
3. Josef Bican (950+ goals)
Born in Vienna and capped by Austria and Czechoslovakia, Josef Bican was one of the most formidable frontmen in world football throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
Slavia Prague’s all-time leading marksman with 591 goals – in a scarcely believable 301 appearances – Bican was also one of the fastest players around, once clocking a 100m time of 10.8 seconds, comparable to leading sprinters of the era.
A star of the Austrian ‘Wunderteam’ that reached the semi-finals of the 1934 World Cup, Bican is the top goalscorer in European top-flight history, registering a whopping 518 times for clubs in Austria and Czechoslovakia.
2. Erwin Helmchen (989+ goals)
No player in the history of the game has hit as many hat-tricks as Erwin Helmchen – who must have needed a whole extra house for the 142 match balls he collected over the course of his 28-year career.
The German goal machine – who, for various reasons, including once having to attend a wedding, never did represent his country – played mostly for PSV Chemnitz, with whom he won the 1932 Central German Football Championship and notched more than 500 league goals.
Helmchen also played – and scored at will – for hometown side Brandenburg Cottbus, SG Chemnitz Nord and VfB Lubeck.
1. Cristiano Ronaldo (994 goals)
Top of the tree and still adding to his tally at the ripe old age of 41, Cristiano Ronaldo goes down as the ultimate goalscorer in football history, closing in on a never-before-reached 1,000 goals at the time of writing.
The record scorer in men’s international football with close to 150 goals for Portugal – who he captained to Euro 2016 glory – the five-time Ballon d’Or winner transitioned from an electric winger early in his career into one of the very best number nines ever to fulfil the role.
Especially prolific for Real Madrid, Juventus and current club Al Nassr, Ronaldo tops the charts for all-time Champions League goals with 141 – winning the competition once with Manchester United and four times with Madrid, where he’s also amassed more goals than anyone else (450 in 438 appearances).
