Which players have scored the most Champions League goals in the history of the competition? Here we look at the highest scoring players in UCL history.
Cristiano Ronaldo: 140 goals
Cristiano Ronaldo is the all-time top scorer in the UEFA Champions League with 140 goals. With the Portuguese currently playing for Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr, he is unlikely to add to his tally, which he amassed during spells at Manchester United (21), Real Madrid (105) and Juventus (14).
Ronaldo holds the record for the most goals in a single Champions League season, with his 17 goals for Real Madrid in 2013/14, when they won the UCL trophy with a win over Atlético Madrid in that season’s final, while he followed up with 16 goals two years later in 2015/16.
The Portuguese legend has won the competition’s top scorer award seven times, which is a record in both the European Cup and Champions League eras.
He has scored in a record 93 different UCL matches – 51% of his appearances in the competition, while scoring a hat-trick in eight of them, a record he shares with Lionel Messi.
Ronaldo found the net against 38 different opponents in his Champions League career, with his 10 goals against Juventus being the most by any player against an opponent in the competition’s history.
![Ronaldo UCL goals](https://www.footymercato.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/most-champions-league-goals-all-time-top-scorers-the-analyst.png)
Lionel Messi: 129 goals
Lionel Messi is the second highest scorer in the history of the UEFA Champions League with 129 goals. However, he does hold the record for scoring the most goals for one club in UCL history, with 120 of his 129 goals coming in Barcelona. He added nine more after moving to Ligue 1 giants Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2021, but is unlikely to ever get the chance to add to his tally of 129 goals following his move to the MLS club Inter Miami.
Messi’s record of scoring against 40 different opponents in the UEFA Champions League is a record, ahead of Ronaldo’s total of 38. Nine of those goals came against Arsenal (7%), his favorite opponent in UCL history.
In total, 2022 World Cup winner Messi has scored in 18 different seasons of UCL action, scoring in every season since 2005-06, after failing to score in his only appearance for Barcelona in his debut season of 2004- 2005. He shares this record with Karim Benzema, but the French striker has managed to score in all 18 UCL seasons he has played in since 2005-06.
He may share the UCL record for most hat-tricks in the competition with Cristiano Ronaldo (eight), but he once did something the Portuguese never managed: score five goals in a single Champions League match. He achieved this in Barcelona’s 7–1 victory over Bayer Leverkusen in March 2012 as part of his record-breaking 2011–12 season, during which he scored 73 goals in 60 competitive club appearances.
![Messi UCL goals](https://www.footymercato.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/most-champions-league-goals-all-time-top-scorers-the-analyst-58.png)
Robert Lewandowski: 92 goals
Robert Lewandowski is approaching a century of goals in the UEFA Champions League, but with the Barcelona striker eight goals away and now 35 years old, he may be running out of time.
He did his best in the 2022-2023 season, scoring five goals in five games for Barcelona, but group stage elimination saw them slip into the UEFA Europa League, leaving Lewandowski with a bigger gap between UCL games than he did was used to.
Of his 92 UCL goals, 69 came with Bayern Munich after joining from Borussia Dortmund. He holds the Bayern record for most goals in Europe, ahead of Gerd Müller (65). He also holds the Bundesliga club record for most goals in a single season within the league, with his 15 goals in 2019/20 en route to Bayern winning the league. In doing so, he became the first Polish player to finish as top scorer in a single season of UCL/European Cup action.
![Lewandowski UCL goals](https://www.footymercato.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/most-champions-league-goals-all-time-top-scorers-the-analyst-59.png)
Karim Benzema: 90 goals
With his recent transfer to Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia, Karim Benzema may be 90 years old.
Benzema has scored in the most UCL seasons without finding the net in one, scoring in all 18 seasons of the competition since 2005-06 at Lyon.
The French forward won the Champions League top scorer award for the first time ever in 2021/22. With his fifteen goals he helped Real Madrid to the title, although he failed to score in the final victory over Liverpool in Paris.
His 78 goals for Real Madrid in the league are only behind Cristiano Ronaldo’s 105.
![Benzema UCL goals](https://www.footymercato.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/most-champions-league-goals-all-time-top-scorers-the-analyst-60.png)
Former Spain international Raúl is Real Madrid’s third highest scoring player in the history of the UEFA Champions League (66), while his tally of 71 is fifth highest among all players in the competition.
Raúl was the top-scoring player in the league until November 2014, when he was finally overtaken by Messi and Ronaldo, while the Real Madrid great became the first player to score 50 goals in the league, in September 2005. In fact, he was the first Real player who scored 50 goals in Europe after Alfredo Di Stéfano had previously scored 49 times in European competition for the Spanish side.
His final season in the league came with German side FC Schalke 04 in 2010–11, when he scored five times as a 33-year-old. This took his total score to 71 in the competition, which is more than double the next best score by a Spanish player in the competition: Fernando Morientes’ 33 goals.
![Raúl UCL goals](https://www.footymercato.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/most-champions-league-goals-all-time-top-scorers-the-analyst-61.png)
Other players with more than 50 UCL goals
Ruud van Nistelrooy: 56 goals
Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy scored a total of 56 goals in the UEFA Champions League, but that number could have been higher had he played more UCL action earlier in his career. He played just eleven games for PSV before his 25th birthday and his debut for Manchester United in the league.
No player has scored 50 UEFA Champions League goals faster than Van Nistelrooy (62 appearances), but he was 31 years old when he broke that milestone.
He scored 35 goals in the Champions League for Manchester United – a club record, ahead of Wayne Rooney (30) and Ryan Giggs (28).
Van Nistelrooy is the highest scoring player never to win the UEFA Champions League, despite playing for eleven seasons in the competition and for clubs that have won the trophy a total of ten times.
Thomas Müller: 53 goals
Thomas Müller just played his fifteenth Champions League season as a Bayern Munich player, scoring in fourteen of them (he only failed in 2018/19).
Since his competitive debut in 2008/2009, he has scored 53 goals and provided 23 assists. His goal tally is more than double that of any other German player in the competition: Mario Gomez (26).
With Bayern Munich he won the Champions League twice, both in 2012/13 and 2019/20.
Thierry Henry: 50 goals
Thierry Henry scored 50 goals in the UEFA Champions League for three clubs: Arsenal (35), Barcelona (eight) and Monaco (seven).
He started life as a UCL player in style, scoring six goals in his first five Monaco appearances as a 20-year-old, before moving to Arsenal in 1999-00. His 35 goals for the Gunners make him the highest scoring player in Champions League/European Cup history.
Will Haaland and Mbappe break the UCL goals record?
With all players having scored more than 50 UEFA Champions League goals, either in retirement or in the final years of their careers, the focus is now on which players can ultimately break the UCL scoring records in the coming years.
Kylian Mbappe looks to be a solid bet to score 50 goals in the league next, with PSG and France scoring 42 UCL goals after his goal against Milan. Former Liverpool team-mate Neymar (43) and Mohamed Salah (44) may be ahead of him in the all-time league goals list, but the speed at which Mbappe is rising up the rankings should worry Cristiano Ronaldo at the top of the table. rankings.
![Mbappé Champions League Goals Opta](https://www.footymercato.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/most-champions-league-goals-all-time-top-scorers-the-analyst-17.jpg)
Mbappe scored seven goals in eight Champions League games for PSG in the 2022-23 season, before their last-16 exit against Bayern Munich. He scored 40 goals in the league in 59 games – two fewer than Messi and Robert Lewandowski (61) needed and 23 games faster than Ronaldo (82). He is also the youngest of all 17 players to score 40 goals in the competition (23 years, 316 days). He thus breaks Messi’s previous record, which was 24 years and 130 days old.
However, the French star is looking over his shoulder at Manchester City’s goalscoring phenomenon Erling Haaland.
![Haaland Champions League goals Opta](https://www.footymercato.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/most-champions-league-goals-all-time-top-scorers-the-analyst-18.jpg)
Haaland has now scored a ridiculous 39 goals in 34 Champions League appearances after back-to-back braces against Young Boys, and he’s still just 23 years old. To put that into context, the previous record for most goals by a player in the first 34 UCL appearances was held by Van Nistelrooy, who at the same point in his UCL career had scored 30 goals as Haaland is now – nine fewer than Man City’s current striker has managed.
He scored 39 UCL goals at an age (23 years, 109 days) 200 days younger than Mbappé and it took him fewer games compared to the Frenchman (58) and less than half that of Messi (59).
Haaland also became just one of three players to score five goals in a single Champions League match in Man City’s last-16 win over RB Leipzig in March 2022.
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