Who will lead the race to become the all-time top scorer in Europe’s biggest club competition? We’ve taken a closer look at the best finishers. The Champions League has had some of the world’s best goalscorers in history. As the premier club competition in Europe and perhaps the world, it’s a stage graced by countless icons of football.
High-profile sensations like Raúl and Andriy Shevchenko dominated the 1990s and 2000s, while Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi took the art of scoring to a whole new level.
These are the all-time top scorers in the history of the Champions League, dating back to the first European Cup in 1955.
Who is the all-time Champions League top scorer?
Ronaldo is the top scorer in the history of the Champions League (including the European Cup) with 183 goals. He is being gasped by his arch-rival, Messi (162). There is a significant gap between those two and the rest. Barcelona striker Robert Lewandowski follows in third place with 111 goals. Karim Benzema follows in fourth, while Raúl rounds out the top five, including Ruud van Nistelrooij, Thomas Müller and Thierry Henry. best of the rest.
The composition of the all-time goalscorers list consists mainly of players who play or played in the modern Champions League era (i.e. from 1992 onwards), which has added more matches to the modern football calendar. Despite this, two players who played in the pre-Champions League era (when the tournament was known as the European Cup) still feature prominently, with former Real Madrid star Alfrédo Di Stefano and Benfica icon Eusébio in and around the top ten.
Ferenc Puskas, who shone for Real Madrid in the 1950s and 1960s, is also in the top 20. Former Bayern Munich striker Gerd Müller was in the top 20 before being overtaken by Mohamed Salah. Despite being out of the top 20, no player comes close to matching Müller’s phenomenal goals-per-game ratio of 0.95.
Puskas had a goal-to-game ratio of 0.85 and Di Stefano’s was 0.84, while Messi’s is currently 0.8, which is undoubtedly the best in modern times.