Top 10 La Liga players with the best goal per game ratio: Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe…
Former Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid stars are among the 10 players with the best goal-to-game ratio in La Liga since 2000.
Scoring goals is the aim of the game and it’s safe to say that La Liga has been graced with some of the best forwards of all time over the years.
Since the year 2000, here are the 10 players with the best goal per game ratio in La Liga.
=9. Zlatan Ibrahimovic – 0.55 goals per game
Considering that Barcelona fans never saw the best of Ibrahimovic, it’s impressive in itself that he’s made the cut for this list.
Despite only lasting one season at Camp Nou, he still managed to score 16 goals in 29 league appearances, which isn’t too shabby.
“Yes, I disappointed myself,” Ibrahimovic told Canal Plus when reflecting on his time in Spain.
“I did things differently. I thought twice before acting and I disappointed myself. I lost my identity there. Afterwards, I found it again, and that allowed me to conquer the world.”
With a ratio of 0.55 goals per game, he slightly edges ahead of Karim Benzema for a place in the top 10 of this list.
=9. Neymar – 0.55 goals per game
In La Liga, Neymar enjoyed his most prolific season in 2015-16 when he scored 24 league goals in 34 appearances.
Across his entire stint in Spain, he managed to score 68 league goals in 123 appearances, giving him an overall ratio of 0.55 goals per game.
Considering he was never Barcelona’s main focal point in the final third, those numbers are massively impressive.
8. Gonzalo Higuain – 0.56 goals per game
The Argentine forward became a regular in the Real Madrid XI back in 2008–09 and after that point, he was scoring goals on a regular basis.
He scored over 20 league goals in three of his last five seasons at the Santiago Bernabeu, averaging 0.56 goals per game across his entire stint in Spain.
7. Ronaldo Nazario – 0.65 goals per game
Since this list is only taking the post-2000 era into account, Ronaldo’s incredible 1996–97 campaign with Barcelona doesn’t count towards his tally here.
During that season, he scored 34 league goals and averaged 0.91 goals per game for the Spanish giants.
While his record of 0.65 goals per game at Real Madrid isn’t quite as impressive, it’s still good enough to earn him the seventh spot on this list.
6. Artem Dovbyk – 0.67 goals per game
The Ukrainian forward only spent one season playing in Spain, but what a year it was.
He managed to fire Girona into the Champions League as he scored 24 goals in 36 appearances across the 2023-24 campaign.
Following his eye-catching year in Spain, Roma snapped him up last summer and Girona have struggled to reach the same heights without Dovbyk leading the line.
5. Robert Lewandowski – 0.69 goals per game
Most players start to wind down by the time they hit 36, but that’s not the case for Lewandowski.
Since joining Barcelona in 2022, the Polish forward has maintained the standards that he set while playing in Germany, having scored 67 league goals in just 98 appearances.
“People are talking about my age… but I know I’m working as hard as always. I want to play at the top level for a few more years,” Lewandowski recently told reporters.
“I feel very good physically. There’s no difference between a few years ago and now in terms of my stats.”
READ: 7 insane records Robert Lewandowski has broken for Barcelona this season
4. Luis Suarez – 0.7 goals per game
Suarez managed to score over 20 league goals in five of his eight seasons in La Liga for Barcelona and Atletico Madrid.
He enjoyed his most prolific campaign in 2015-16 where he managed to score 40 league goals in just 35 appearances.
At his peak, he’s arguably the best out-and-out striker in La Liga history, although his record of 0.7 goals per game is only good enough to earn him fourth spot on this list.
3. Kylian Mbappe – 0.79 goals per game
Of course, Mbappe is currently being judged by a very small sample size compared to the majority of this list, but the early signs have been very promising from the Frenchman.
After a couple of hiccups in his first few months in Madrid, the 26-year-old has been playing out of his skin since the turn of the year.
If he manages to maintain that ratio of 0.79 goals per game throughout his entire La Liga career, he’ll go down as an all-time great at Real Madrid.
2. Lionel Messi – 0.91 goals per game
Messi tops the all-time La Liga scoring charts with 474 goals in 520 appearances, but that’s not quite good enough to earn him the top spot on this list.
The Argentine’s genius shone through from his early years, but he didn’t become a prolific scorer in La Liga until the 2008-09 season.
He holds the record for the most goals scored in a single La Liga season, thanks to his heroics in 2011-12 when he scored 50 goals in 37 appearances.
From 2008 until 2021, he also managed to score more than 20 goals in 13 consecutive seasons. However, he’s just been pipped to the top spot.
1. Cristiano Ronaldo – 1.07 goals per game
After joining Real Madrid in 2009, Ronaldo’s goalscoring numbers went supersonic.
Across his nine years in Spain, CR7 scored 311 La Liga goals in just 292 appearances, averaging a ridiculous 1.07 goals per game.
He might’ve only won two La Liga titles, but when it comes to sticking the ball in the back of the net, no one has done it better than Ronaldo in La Liga history.
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