In the latest round of Champions League football, Manchester City’s superstar striker Erling Haaland fired himself into the top 20 all-time goalscorers in the tournament (including its predecessor, the European Cup). Also, England star (and new Bayern Munich talisman) Harry Kane became only the third Englishman to score 25 Champions League goals (after Wayne Rooney and Raheem Sterling). But which players make up the top 10 all-time goalscorers in Europe’s elite club competition?

In this article, we’ll run through the top 10 goalscorers, covering both the Champions League and the European Cup (that began in the 1955/56 season). Then we’ll delve a little deeper into the top five and find out what other goalscoring records they set on Europe’s grandest stage.

All-time Top 10 Champions League/European Cup Goalscorers

Note that Andriy Shevchenko and Zlatan Ibrahimović are in joint-10th position in the all-time list.

There are no real surprises to see two of football’s all-time greats at the top of the list, with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi being the only two players to have netted more than 100 goals in the Champions League. They have very similar goals-to-game ratios (0.77 for Ronaldo and 0.79 for Messi), but both are behind Robert Lewandowski (0.81 at the time of writing) and the Real Madrid legend, Alfredo Di Stefano (0.84).

Only one player in the top 20 can better Di Stefano’s ratio… you’ve guessed it, Man City’s Erling Haaland. At the time of writing, the Norwegian ace has an astounding goals-to-game ratio of 1.15, and if he keeps going like that it won’t be long before he ascends into the top 10! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. There’s a long way to go for Haaland to get near the likes of Messi and Ronaldo, so let’s take a closer look at their Champions League goal-getting exploits, along with the other three players in the top five.

Cristiano Ronaldo – 140 Goals in 183 Games (0.77 Goals Per Game)

Arguably the greatest player in the history of the game (although the man directly below him in the table might have something to say about that), Cristiano Ronaldo was a goal machine in the Champions League. Banging in plenty of (often crucial) goals for Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus, CR7 also tops the all-time list for the number of Champions League appearances.

The Portuguese legend was the top scorer in the Champions League for six seasons in a row (from 2012/13 to 2017/18) and also the top scorer earlier on in his career (2007/08). He holds the top two positions for the most Champions League goals in a season (17 in 2013/14 and 16 in 2015/16) and is also joint third, just for good measure (with 15 goals in 2017/18). He’s the only player to score three hat-tricks in the competition in a single season (2015/16) and shares the record for the total number of Champions League hat-tricks with Messi (with eight apiece). He holds numerous other records in the competition too, but let’s leave it there or it might just go to this head!

Lionel Messi – 129 Goals in 163 Games (0.79 Goals Per Game)

Lionel Messi certainly has valid claims as being the best footballer ever, though most objective pundits would put him just behind Ronaldo. Certainly, when it comes to Champions League goalscoring exploits, the Argentine great has to play second fiddle to his rival.

Having said that, Messi does hold a good number of Champions League records. As well as the aforementioned joint record for the most hat-tricks, Messi has scored more home goals in the tournament than any other player (78) and the most for any single club (120 for Barca). He’s also scored more than anyone else in the Group Stage (80) and the Round of 16 (29), and he’s one of just three players to have scored five goals in a Champions League match (excluding preliminary rounds), although 10 players achieved that feat in the pre-Champions League-era European Cup.

Robert Lewandowski – 92 Goals in 113 Games (0.81 Goals Per Game)

Robert Lewandowski is one of only two players in the current top 10 who is still playing in Europe (along with Bayern Munich’s Thomas Müller), but we can’t realistically see him challenging the top two. He does have a reasonable chance of making it to 100 Champions League goals, although he’s 35 now so he might not have many more seasons left to achieve that milestone.

Lewandowski scored the majority of his CL goals for Bayern (69 in 78 games), including the 15 he scored in the tournament in the 2019/20 season (the joint-third-best total in a single season). He holds the record for the fastest hat-trick in a CL game (from the start of the match) and he’s the only player to have scored hat-trick for three different sides in the competition.

Karim Benzema – 90 Goals in 152 Games (0.59 Goals Per Game)

Like Ronaldo, Karim Benzema has left Europe for the green grass of Saudi Arabia! Before that, though, he was a regular scorer in the Champions League, first for Lyon (for whom he scored 12 goals in 19 games) and then, more famously, Real Madrid (78 goals in 133 games). He’s the oldest player to have scored a hat-trick in the tournament, getting a triple against Chelsea in 2022 at the age of 34 years and 108 days. He is also one of just two players (along with Ronaldo) to have scored 10 goals in the knockout phase of the competition in a single season (in 2021/22), the season in which he notched a total of 15, the joint-third-highest number in a single campaign.

Raúl – 71 Goals in 142 Games (0.5 Goals Per Game)

Spanish great Raúl completes our top five, and though he’s long since retired, he made his mark on the competition early in his career and still holds the record as the youngest player to have scored a Champions League hat-trick (aged just 18 years and 114 days). He was also the first player to make it to 100 Champions League appearances, all of those having been while playing for Real Madrid (though he later appeared – and scored – for Schalke in the tournament).

Manchester City have had plenty of fantastic players in the modern era. But in early October 2023, the club said farewell to one of their all-time greats, Francis Lee.

Unfortunately, the former Bolton Wanderers, Man City, Derby County and England forward lost his long battle with cancer at the age of 79. However, “Franny” will be remembered fondly by fans of his three clubs, England supporters and many a neutral who witnessed his goalscoring prowess and the unapologetic swagger with which he played.

Let’s take a closer look at Lee’s career that began back in 1960 when he made his debut for Bolton Wanderers at the age of 16.

Francis Lee’s Career in Numbers

Bolton Wanderers – Learning from a Legend

Lee made his debut for Bolton aged 16 in November 1960 against a side he would come to know and love: Manchester City. He scored in the match, as did his strike partner on the day, 35-year-old Bolton and England legend Nat Lofthouse. Lee was still an amateur at the time and didn’t turn pro until May 1961, but he soon earned his paycheque as he was the club’s top scorer in four of the next five seasons.

His goalscoring exploits attracted the attention of many other clubs, with Matt Busby at Man United and Bill Shankly at Liverpool both reportedly interested in signing Lee. But it was Joe Mercer’s Manchester City who got their man for a club-record fee of £60,000 in September 1967 – roughly what Kevin De Bruyne earns in a day now!

Man City – Sustained Success at City

The move to City worked brilliantly for both Lee and his new club as he slotted seamlessly into the team that contained stars including Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee and Neil Young. In his first season at the club, Lee scored 17 goals (including 16 in 31 league matches) and City won their first top-flight title since 1936/37, then only the second in the club’s history.

The silverware continued to flow the following year as City took the Charity Shield and the FA Cup, then in 1969/70 the Citizens added the League Cup and the European Cup Winners’ Cup. City couldn’t mount another effective challenge for the First Division title but Lee continued to hammer in plenty of goals and provide no shortage of assists too.

He was the top scorer for City in four of his seasons at the club, including when he bagged a very impressive total of 35 in 1971/72… with a record 15 of them coming from the penalty spot! He also set a record for the most goals in Manchester derbies (10) that stood until Wayne Rooney edged past it in 2013.

Derby County – Another Team, Another Title

Lee moved on from Man City to join Dave Mackay’s Derby County in 1974. The club had won the First Division title under former boss Brian Clough and now Mackay was hoping to emulate that success… and for Franny Lee to help him do it. Lee was brought in to bolster what was already an impressive attacking line-up that included Kevin Hector, Bruce Rioch and Roger Davies. Lee didn’t quite hit the scoring heights he’d achieved at City, but he netted 12 league goals in 34 appearances, including one or two crucial strikes, and Derby clinched the title by two points from Liverpool.

Although he will be mostly remembered for his goals, Lee was involved in an incident that will be remembered for as long as many (perhaps any) of his goals. The incident in question was essentially a full-on fistfight with Leeds United hardman Norman Hunter in 1975. Given Hunter was almost four inches taller than Lee (and also had the ominous nickname “Bites Yer Legs”), Lee certainly showed his courage when he went toe-to-toe with the Leeds brawler.

England

Had Lee developed his scoring skills just a little sooner, he might have been involved in England’s 1966 campaign. To be fair, though, Al Ramsay’s men did pretty well without him. As it was, Lee made his England debut a couple of years later in 1968 against Bulgaria in a friendly match. He scored his first of 10 goals for his country in his next game in a one-sided 5-0 thrashing of France. (How the modern-day England team would love a result like that!)

Although he missed out on the 1966 tournament, Lee was in the England squad in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. He played in three games but couldn’t find the back of the net. He did become the first England player to receive a yellow card at a World Cup (FIFA had only just introduced them), but he would have happily forgotten that “honour”. Unfortunately for Lee and England, the Three Lions couldn’t capitalise on their 2-0 lead against West Germany in the quarter-finals and ended up losing 3-2!

Lee scored in his next three England games after the 1970 World Cup and then – after a mini-drought by his high standards – he scored in his final match for England, a 3-1 defeat to West Germany in a Euro 1972 qualifying match.

Post-Football Business Career

After retiring from the game, Lee became a successful businessman and created a toilet roll manufacturer (that reportedly once employed the comedian Peter Kay!). After making a few quid, Lee gained enough clout to become the Man City chairman in 1994… but things didn’t go quite to plan and on the pitch, the team couldn’t live up to Lee’s ambitions.

Of course, Lee will be best remembered for his playing days and his many, brilliant goals… including this classic that he scored for Derby against his old club Man City (and that has become immortalised almost as much for Barry Davies’s commentary as the strike itself):