According to index.hu, Cristiano Ronaldo scored two goals on the World Cup qualifier match against Latvia last Sunday. It could’ve been three but he missed a penalty kick. With these two goals he now has 68 all together, which means that he caught up with the 4th Gerd Müller and Robbie Keane on the all-time world ranking list.
The list is still led by two Hungarians, the two legends of the Golden Team; Ferenc Puskás and Sándor Kocsis scored 84 and 75 goals. The retired Miroslav Klose is in the 3rd place with his 71 goals.
Ferenc Puskás also played in the Spanish national team between 1961 and 1962, but he didn’t score any more goals there. Kocsis managed to do the hat trick seven times during his career. Klose was part of the national team for the first time in January, 2001, and retired 13 years later, but still scored three goals in 2014.
Gerd Müller, just like Kocsis, is known for having scored more goals than the number of matches he attended. From this aspect, Kocsis’s goal/match rate is still a bit better.
However, Cristiano Ronaldo has every chance to pass everyone on the list, since he probably has many more matches to play with the national team. Moreover, he will play several matches where he scoring goals seems to be easy: next year the Portuguese will play against Latvia, Faroe Islands, and Andorra, and these are just the World Cup qualifier matches.
The all-time world ranking of European football players (Top 10):
- Ferenc Puskás – 84 goals at 89 matches
- Sándor Kocsis – 75 goals at 68 matches
- Miroslav Klose – 71 goals at 137 matches
- Cristiano Ronaldo – 68 goals at 136 matches
- Gerd Müller – 68 goals at 62 matches
- Robbie Keane – 68 goals at 146 matches
- Zlatan Ibrahimovic – 62 goals at 116 matches
- Imre Schlosser – 59 goals at 68 matches
- David Villa – 59 goals at 97 matches
- Jan Koller – 55 goals at 91 matches
Copy editor: bm
Source: http://index.hu/
