On Wednesday, Lionel Messi surpassed Pele to become the highest scorer for a single club. He now boasts 644 goals for Barcelona compared to Pele’s 643 goals for Santos.
Let’s have a look at the top 5 players with the record of the highest number of goals for a single club.
5. Josef Bican
Josef Bican was a Vienna-born footballer, also the greatest player to have ever pulled on the Austrian international jersey. Bican, who was a clinical striker, notched over 805 goals in 530 matches. Bican made his debut for the senior Austria team at the age of 20.
Not only this, but Bican also has a record of scoring 542 goals for a single club, Slavia Praha, which makes him stand at the 5th positions for the players with most numbers of goal for a single club.
The Austrian forward played for Slavia Praha for 11 years but his career was severely damaged by World War II.
4. Fernando Peyroteo
Also called the goal-scoring machine, Peyroteo scored 330 goals in 197 matches in the Primeira Liga with an average of 1.68 goals per game.
Peyroteo’s best season marks for most goals in the Primeira Liga with 43 goals in only 19 league matches. That record stood until another Sporting player, Argentinian Hector Yazalde, scored 46 in 1973-74 but he did it in 29 matches.
Peyroteo’s 9 goals in a single match against Leça F.C. in 1942 still stands as a record in Portugal’s top competition. He also became the first player to score five goals in consecutive matches in 1942. He comes at the 4th position to have scored most goals for a single club with 569 goals for Sporting CP.
3. Gerd Muller
The former Germany international, Gerd Muller netted 570 goals for Bayern Munich between 1964 and 1979. Gerd Muller began his football career with the TSV 1861 Nördlingen and joined FC Bayern Munich in 1964.
With his club, Muller won many titles during the 60s and 70s. He won the German Championship four times, the DFB-Pokal four times, the European Champions’ Cup three times, the Intercontinental Cup once, and the European Cup Winners’ Cup once. A supreme goal-scorer who also became a German top scorer seven times and a European top scorer twice.
Muller scored 365 goals in 427 Bundesliga matches for Bayern Munich, almost 100 goals more than the second most successful Bundesliga scorer, Klaus Fischer. He also holds the record of scoring most goals, 570, for a single club after Messi and Pele. He holds the single-season Bundesliga record with 40 goals in season 1971–72. He scored 68 goals in 62 German Cup games.
2. Pele
Edson Arantes do Nascimento, simply known as Pele, a global icon who revolutionized the sport of football in the last 80 years.
When Pele was selected by Brazil for the 1958 World Cup, aged 17, he became the youngest player to be named in a World Cup squad. Pele scored 95 goals in 114 games for Brazil, and 77 goals from 92 official caps that were recognized by FIFA. Another big record Pele has in store is that of winning the World Cup twice.
Also, Pele is the second player after Messi to break the record with the highest number of goals for a single club, 643 goals for Santos.
1. Lionel Messi
Messi scored his 644th goal for Barca on Tuesday, at 65th minute against Real Valladolid to break the long-standing record held by legend, Pele, which was made almost half a century ago.
The Argentine also has a long list of records as, he is the overall top goal scorer in La Liga, 451 goals; the player with the most hat tricks in the Spanish top flight, 35; the only player to score the most goals, 91 goals, for club and country in a calendar year; the only player ever to have scored more than 50 goals or more in nine different seasons and also the winner of the most Ballon d’Ors ever with six of them.
