Cristiano Ronaldo
Gerd Müller
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Cristiano Ronaldo leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Cristiano Ronaldo at #4 and Gerd Müller at #12.
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The case for Cristiano Ronaldo
The greatest accumulator in the history of the sport, and its most relentless big-stage scorer. Ronaldo passed 900 career goals in September 2024 and has continued adding to a total no player has approached; he owns the Champions League records for goals (140) and titles among modern forwards (5, one with Manchester United and four with Real Madrid, including the 2016-18 three-peat in which he was top scorer every season), and the all-time international record with 135+ goals in 215+ appearances for Portugal, whom he led to Euro 2016 and two Nations League titles (2019, 2025). He won league championships in England, Spain and Italy and the Ballon d'Or five times, finishing second to Messi in the award more often than anyone. The case against him is the case for him inverted: less a creator or orchestrator than a finishing machine of unmatched consistency, whose remade body and self-management extended a world-class peak from age 21 to nearly 40. On durability and output, he has no rival on this list.
The case for Gerd Müller
Der Bomber der Nation — the most ruthlessly efficient goalscorer the sport has produced. Squat and unspectacular but impossible to mark in the six-yard box, Müller scored 68 goals in just 62 internationals for West Germany, including the winner in the 1974 World Cup final and the golden-boot-topping 10 goals of the 1970 tournament. His single-season Bundesliga record of 40 goals in 1971-72 stood for nearly fifty years, until Robert Lewandowski managed 41 in 2020-21, and his 365 Bundesliga goals remain the competition's all-time mark by a distance. He won the 1970 Ballon d'Or, the 1972 European Championship, and three consecutive European Cups with Bayern Munich from 1974 to 1976, finishing with over 600 goals in senior club and international football. Not a dribbler or a creator — a finisher of pure, remorseless instinct, whose economy in front of goal set the template every poacher since has been measured against.