Lionel Messi
Gerd Müller
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Lionel Messi leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Lionel Messi at #1 and Gerd Müller at #12.
Head-to-head FAQ
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The case for Lionel Messi
The most complete statistical résumé the sport has produced, attached to its most aesthetically singular player. Messi holds the records for Ballons d'Or (8), goals for a single club (672 for Barcelona in 778 games), goals in a calendar year (91 in 2012), and assists in La Liga history, alongside 850+ career goals and 380+ assists as of the 2024-25 season — meaning he has been the best passer and the best scorer of his era simultaneously. He won four Champions Leagues and ten La Liga titles with Barcelona, anchoring the 2009 sextuple side and the 2011 team many rate the best in club history. The old asterisk — nothing with Argentina — was demolished by the 2021 Copa América, the 2022 World Cup, where his 7 goals and second Golden Ball made him the first player to win the award twice, and the 2024 Copa América. With 45+ senior trophies, he is also the most decorated player ever. Peak, longevity, achievement, influence: he leads on every axis but pure goal volume.
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.