Ferenc Puskás
Gerd Müller
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Ferenc Puskás leads 1 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Ferenc Puskás at #10 and Gerd Müller at #12.
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The case for Ferenc Puskás
The deadliest left foot the game has known, and the star of its greatest lost team. Puskás scored 84 goals in 85 internationals for Hungary — a strike rate no modern player approaches — captaining the Aranycsapat through an Olympic gold in 1952, the 6-3 and 7-1 destructions of England in 1953-54, and a four-year unbeaten run that ended only in the 1954 World Cup final, where an injured Puskás scored and had a late equalizer disallowed in the 3-2 loss to West Germany. After the 1956 uprising he left Hungary, was banned for two years, and joined Real Madrid at 31 — supposedly overweight and finished. He then won four Pichichi trophies, scored 156 league goals in 180 games, struck four in the 1960 European Cup final against Eintracht Frankfurt (still the record for a final) and a hat-trick in the 1962 final in defeat. Career total: 700+ goals across two lives, either of which would justify this ranking. FIFA's award for the year's best goal fittingly bears his name.
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.