Robert Lewandowski & the six other players in football history to score 700+ goals
Barcelona striker Robert Lewandowski has joined an exclusive club of just seven players in the entire history of football that have scored 700 career goals.
There’s some degree of debate, with other sources counting the numbers differently, but the IFFHS – International Federation of Football History & Statistics – is widely recognised and respected within the injury, and that’s good enough for us.
We’ve taken a closer look at Lewandowski and the six other players to have scored 700 career goals.
7. Robert Lewandowski – 700 goals*
*Why the asterisk? Well, that’s there because the number is apparently up for debate.
The IFFHS recognise that Lewandowski sits seventh behind this lot in football’s all-time top goalscorers list. But they list his tally on just 646, meaning that he’ll likely need to keep banging them in for another couple of seasons if he’s to reach that nice round milestone.
But we’re not entirely sure which goals they’re not counting after Lewy’s latest milestone went viral, via Polish outlet TVP Sport – they stack up on Wikipedia and Transfermarkt; 38 goals in the lower divisions of Polish football as a youngster, 41 for Lech Poznan, 103 for Borussia Dortmund, 344 for Bayern Munich and 74 for Barcelona – adding up to 616 in the club game, plus 84 on the international stage for Poland.
Either way, Lewandowski sits behind only Messi and Ronaldo as the third-highest goalscorer of the 21st century and has long since secured his legend as one of the greatest strikers in history… having just moved ahead of Gerd Muller in the all-time rankings for goals in Europe’s major leagues.
READ: The top 10 goalscorers in the history of Europe’s top five leagues: Lewandowski moves third…
6. Josef Bican – 722 goals
“I heard so many times that it was easier to score in my day,” Bican reminisced during his latter days.
“But the chances were the same a hundred years ago and will be the same a hundred years from now. The situation is identical and everybody would agree that a chance should be a goal. If I got five chances, I scored five goals – if I got seven then it was seven.”
The numbers back him up. An outrageous haul.
5. Ferenc Puskas – 725 goals
Back in 1960, Puskas scored four goals in Real Madrid’s 7-3 European Cup final victory over Eintracht Frankfurt and only finished runner-up in the Ballon d’Or voting, missing out to Barcelona icon Luis Suarez. Different times.
Alfredo Di Stefano notched a hat-trick in the same game and didn’t even make the podium, although he had won the golden ball in two of the first four years.
Puskas’ astonishing 22-year career saw him register a better-than-goal-a-game average for his hometown club Budapest Honved, 382 in 367 matches, before adding a further 242 goals in 262 games for Real Madrid. He also scored 84 goals in 85 caps for his country.
4. Romario – 756 goals
Back in 2007, former Barcelona forward Romario came out of retirement for Vasco da Gama in order to fulfil his ambition of reaching 1000 career goals.
He did so, kind of, but only because that tally includes goals scored in friendlies, youth games and even matches that were annulled or replayed.
The IFFHS view things differently, adjudging ‘just’ 756 of those goals count officially. That’s still 756 more officially recognised professional goals than any of us have scored.
READ NEXT: How long it will take Lionel Messi to reach 900 career goals?
TRY A QUIZ: Can you name the top 50 goalscorers across Europe’s major leagues since 2000?
3. Pele – 762 goals
Another name you’d have expected to find in the upper echelons of this list.
Like Romario, estimates and official tallies vary when it comes to Pele… but whatever number you land on it’s safe to say can be described, customarily, as ‘sh*tloads’.
“To watch him play was to watch the delight of a child combined with the extraordinary grace of a man,” once said Nelson Mandela, which is frankly far more eloquent or profound than anything we might’ve hoped to put ourselves here.
2. Lionel Messi – 849 goals
Eight hundred and forty-nine goals… and counting.
At the time of writing, Messi has scored hat-tricks in his last two appearances for Argentina and Inter Miami, so it doesn’t exactly seem as though he’s slowing down. The eight-time Ballon d’Or winner might be 37 but we’d be surprised if he doesn’t make it to at least 900 career goals by the time he eventually hangs up his boots.
1. Cristiano Ronaldo – 907 goals
Ronaldo’s slightly sad latter months at Manchester United, and his struggles in front of goal for Portugal at Euro 2024, have shown us that Ronaldo probably isn’t quite cut out for football at the top level anymore. But he’s 40 in a few months time, so what did you expect?
He might not be quite as mobile as he once was, but he’s still not lost his penalty-box instincts and hunger for smashing records and reaching milestones. The Portuguese veteran has scored 73 goals in 81 appearances for Al Nassr.
“I want to reach 1,000 goals,” Ronaldo said, speaking in a YouTube interview with Rio Ferdinand back in August.
“If I don’t have any injuries, this for me is the most important [thing], I want that.”
Will it happen? We’re saying yes.