The most goals scored in a single season in history: Ronaldo 8th, Messi 2nd…
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have earned their reputations as two of the greatest goalscorers in football history – but neither of them hold the record for the most goals scored in a single season.
The all-time list of the most prolific goalscorers is an interesting mix of historic legends, modern-day superstars and one or two names you might not be familiar with.
We’ve dusted off the history books and identified the 10 footballers – playing at a professional level, in a top-flight league – that have scored the most goals in all competitions in a single season.
10. Fernando Peyroteo – 56 goals (1945-46)
Beating Robert Lewandowski and Mario Jardel (55 goals apiece) to sneak into the top 10 is an often overlooked figure of the European game. Portuguese legend Peyroteo was astonishingly prolific over the course of his 12 years with Sporting.
He fired the Lions to five Primeira Liga titles during the war period and his official record of 332 league goals in just 197 appearances (554 in 334 in all competitions) makes him – statistically speaking – one of the best goalscorers in the history of the game.
That works out as a scarcely believable career average of 1.62 goals per game.
Peyroteo’s peak came in the 1945-46 campaign, in which he scored 56 goals in 35 outings across the Primeira Liga, Taca de Portugal and now-defunct Lisbon Championship.
And he might’ve scored more were it not for his decision to retire at the age of just 31 in 1949.
“I can no longer meet the demands faced by a football player who wants to stay in shape and be useful to his club and to the sport,” he told the Sporting fans in a farewell speech.
“When I enter the field I am filled with enthusiasm, but after half a dozen kicks on the ball, an inexplicable tiredness falls on me.”
9. Luis Suarez – 59 goals (2015-16)
The only other name besides you know who from a major European league in the 21st century, Suarez was ridiculous in the 2015-16 season.
Fresh from helping fire La Blaugrana to the treble in his debut season, he hit the ground running and maintained an outrageous pace throughout.
During his peak, Messi was Barcelona’s top scorer in 11 of 12 seasons. This was the exception – his close pal won La Liga’s Golden Boot with 40 goals, and he notched another 19 in other competitions for good measure.
8. Cristiano Ronaldo – 61 goals (2014-15)
It’s testament to Ronaldo’s extraordinary hunger for goals that 61 goals in all competitions – the eighth-highest tally in football history – actually feels surprisingly low for his career-best season.
This is a player that averaged a better-than-goal-a-game record across nine seasons with Real Madrid. You’d have thought one of those years the numbers would’ve been out of this world stratospheric?
Really, Ronaldo was remarkably consistent during his Los Blancos pomp, always notching somewhere around the 50-goal mark, barring his debut season where his game time was limited due to injury.
This might be Ronaldo’s best year in terms of numbers, but it was a bitter year for Madrid as their rivals Barcelona claimed the treble.
7. Dixie Dean – 63 goals (1927-28)
Proper football history buffs know that Dean’s name would feature somewhere in these all-time upper echelons.
The striker has stood as English goalscoring’s benchmark for almost a century, with renewed attention paid to his historic 1927-28 campaign for Everton when it looked like Erling Haaland might break his record. Spoiler alert: he didn’t even get close.
Dean scored 60 league goals in the old first division that year, and a further three in the FA Cup for good measure. We’ll surely never see the like again.
6. Zico – 65 goals (1979)
The Brazil icon notched 70 goals in 56 games for Flamengo in the calendar year of 1979 – one every 70 minutes, in 39 different matches and more than half of his team’s total tally.
As ever with Brazilian football, things get a bit sketchy and debatable when it comes to the exact numbers and which outings are classed ‘official’ matches to be counted in Flamengoʼs 1979 season. Sixty-five of the total 70 goals appears to be the number.
“We are upset,” Flamengo statistician Bruno Lucena responded when it was widely-reported that Messi broke Zico’s long-standing record in 2012.
“Messi still hasn’t passed the milestone. If [Zico] had played for the whole year, he would have scored more than 100 goals.”
=4. Pele – 66 goals (1958)
We recently posited the question ‘Is Lamine Yamal the best Under-18 player in the history of football?‘
On this one, we have to report ourselves under Betteridge’s law of headlines – the answer being no.
The Barcelona wonderkid is making a serious claim to be 2nd, but the answer to that question will always be Pele.
He was just 17 years of age when he led Brazil to their first-ever World Cup in Sweden in 1958. That year he also found the time to score 66(!) goals for Santos in all competitions.
=4. Romario – 66 goals (2000)
Romario returned to Brazil just three years after claiming the Golden Boot and lifting the World Cup at USA ’94.
That year he was named FIFA World Player of the Year, but his European stay wasn’t as long as it might’ve been.
After a couple of years with Flamengo, the striker rejoined boyhood club Vasco da Gama, formed a lethal partnership with fellow Brazil international Edmundo and matched Pele’s mythical tally of 66 goals in the 2000 season.
3. Gerd Muller – 67 goals (1972-73)
Of course, Der Bomber features.
Robert Lewandowski broke a record that stood for almost half a century when he scored 41 Bundesliga goals in the 2020-21 season, but the Polish striker couldn’t break Muller’s single-season record in all competitions – sixty-seven in all competitions for Bayern in 1972-73.
2. Lionel Messi – 73 goals (2011-12)
*Also scored 60 goals in 2012-13
Naturally, Messi is somewhere near the top. The amazing thing is that Messi’s 50 La Liga goals in 2011-12 weren’t enough to deliver the title for Barcelona.
He scored a further 23 in other competitions, lifted the Club World Cup, UEFA Super Cup, Spanish Supercopa and waved Pep Guardiola off with the Copa del Rey but exited the Champions League at the semi-final stage.
On fire at that time, the Argentinian went on to score an all-time record 91 goals for club and country in the calendar year of 2012.
“My record stood for 40 years – 85 goals in 60 games. Now the best player in the world has broken it,” the aforementioned Muller responded.
“I’m delighted for him. He is an incredible player, gigantic.”
QUIZ: Can you name the top 50 goalscorers across Europe’s major leagues since 2000?
1. Josef Bican – 76 goals (1943-44)
*Also scored 63 goals in 1941-42, 60 goals in 1952, and 56 goals in 1939-40 and 1940-41.
The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF) judge the legendary Austria and Czechoslovakia international as one of only three players in football history to have scored more goals than Messi and Ronaldo.
And no wonder when he was putting up numbers like this, regularly averaging over two goals a game during the late 1930s and 1940s for Slavia Prague.
Bican’s best goalscoring year was 1934-44, in which he officially scored 76 from just 32 games in all competitions. Figures you can’t wrap your head around if you view them through a modern lens.
READ NEXT: The top 10 goalscorers in the history of Europe’s top five leagues: Lewandowski moves third…
TRY A QUIZ: Can you name the 30 top goalscorers in Champions League history?