1. Robert Lewandowski
After scoring thirty-one Bundesliga goals in Bayern‘s 2019-20 season, Lewandowski climbed to new heights last season, reaching 41 goals, and beating Gerd Muller’s legendary record. He started the 2021-22 season by scoring seven goals in five Bundesliga appearances – and went on to score in 19 consecutive games in all competitions for Bayern between February and September, bringing his league tally to 33 goals. in the year 2021. A – as they say – goal machine.
2. Erling Haaland
There are 26 goals for the boy who looks more like a cyborg than a man. Having won the good graces of football fans across Europe with his exploits at Red Bull Salzburg, Haaland has positioned himself as the most intriguing product for any super club on the continent. Since the start of the 2019-20 season, the Norwegian international has scored 96 goals in 89 matches at club level and averages more than one goal per game in the Champions League. No wonder he is nicknamed “Terminator”. And no wonder football pundits are starting to run out of every superlative to describe it.
Let’s not forget that he is still only 21, an age in which basically everything has yet to be proved for a normal player, but not for Erling. Any notable striker doesn’t particularly care about how team goals are achieved – a great scorer after all doesn’t necessarily have to keep his goal tally above every other team metric, but for Haaland, scoring really feels like an obsession. During Borussia Dortmund’s 4-2 winon Union Berlin, Haaland has proven that he deserves all the cute nicknames he is given. His first goal was nonsense for a striker of his caliber, who took home a header after a good job on Donyell Malen’s wing. His second goal was scored just to remember another Scandinavian striker in his prime: a certain Zlatan Ibrahimovic. This all adds up to the growing theory that Haaland simply isn’t human, or that it was bizarrely assembled in a top secret Oslo laboratory as an experiment to create the perfect attacker.
No warm-blooded mammal should possess its combination of coldness and relentlessness at such an early age. The run-up of European clubs to grab his services next summer will be truly merciless, as there is a real death in this historical moment for pure first strikers such as Erling Haaland. After all, when you see Haaland score the kind of goal Ibrahimovic has built a career on, you know the payout was worth it.
3. Karim Benzema
Benzema’s great return to Les Bleus did not go as planned last summer at Euro 2020, with a sensational elimination in the round of 16 against Switzerland. This came, among other things, after a disappointing and trophy-free championship with the Real Madrid squadron, of which he is also captain.
However, the lack of precious items to add to the showcase cannot be attributed to the French striker, who seems to age like a good wine: he ends up getting better and better over time, even at the age of 33. It was in fact a year in which he showed off the best form of his career with nine goals and seven assists in eight games with the French Blues national team. The appearances in La Liga 2021-22 so far, then bring his total of goals in the league to 33 overall goals in the year 2021.
4. Lionel Messi
Messi has so far very few Ligue 1 appearances, totaling just 190 minutes, but has yet to open the doors to his arsenal of French top flight prowess, having nevertheless already scored three goals in three Champions League appearances for PSG in these. months.
Even without a goal in the 2021-22 league, Messi remains fourth on this list: the Argentinian scored 23 goals in La Liga for a severely dysfunctional Barcelona in the second half of last season.
6 with equal merit. Andre Silva and Dusan Vlahovic
It was no surprise that one of the biggest players among the Bundesliga clubs moved quickly to take home Andre Silva’s signature, also given his time on fire with Frankfurt’s Eintracht. The Portuguese forward scored 28 goals in 32 Bundesliga appearances for Eintracht last season, 19 of them after the winter break. Since then he has scored two out of eight appearances when counting the length of time since his summer transfer to RB Leipzig.
21-year-old Serbian giant Vlahovic has been linked to rumors of some of Europe’s biggest clubs since becoming one of the most prolific center-forwards around. Vlahovic, like Andre Silva doesn’t seem to slow down either, with four goals in his first eight Serie A appearances of 2021-22, bringing his tally to 21 goals this year.
7. Kylian Mbappe
Mbappe started the new season right where he left off last year: scoring four goals in his first six Ligue 1 appearances in the 2021-22 season so far, ultimately bringing his tally to 20 league goals for the calendar year. Clearly we all expect the number to go even higher with Lionel Messi added to PSG’s attacking line, but somehow the pair have yet to score in Ligue 1 if we count their appearances together in the middle of the pitch. However, it is very early to draw negative conclusions about two such champions who have already proved their worth over the years, and cannot leave room for doubts of any kind. Sports betting sites and their odds clearly show how anything other than PSG’s overwhelming first place in the French league this season would be something extremely out of the ordinary.
8. Cristiano Ronaldo
The 2020 top scorer seems increasingly unlikely to be the first name at the top of the scorer rankings even for the second consecutive year, however the Portuguese champion continues to not disappoint his fans. The fact that Juventus has managed to only just get in the top four and qualify for the Champions League last season, but even in a poorly performing team like that, Ronaldo won for the first time the Capocannoniere award as top scorer in Serie A : marked 29 goals, five more than Scudetto winner Romelu Lukaku.
Since his return to Manchester United, he has already scored in all three of his Champions League group stage appearances – including two resounding wins right at the second-half final – with three more goals in five Premier League appearances leading his personal total to 20 goals in the league for the calendar year 2021. Ronaldo is a guarantee of goals.
9. Ciro Immobile
The Italian international has been one of the most reliable scorers in European football since returning to Lazio in 2016, averaging over 20 Serie A goals per season for five consecutive seasons. Really impressive. Even working with Maurizio Sarri does not seem to stop in the least his run towards the opponent’s goal, with one goal per game (ie seven out of seven appearances) in the 2021-22 Serie A, he records 18 goals in the league for the calendar year 2021.
10. Wissam Ben Yedder
Ben Yedder regularly hit double digits over a decade ago at Toulouse, but it seems that he has even reached new heights of success on the threshold of his 30s once he returned to Ligue 1 with Monaco (after spending a few years of his career outside of France with Sevilla). He has scored five goals so far in 2021-22 – only Lille’s Jonathan David has scored more in the French top division – and 18 total in 2021.
