Janice R. Andrews
A lot of people think that Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are two of the best goal makers in football history. Between them, they have scored 899 and 838 goals, which is an amazing number. It is said by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) that Ronaldo and Messi are the two best football goals ever. But some people don’t agree with this number.
A different view is given by the Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation (RSSSF), which is a separate football history group. The way RSSSF calculates rankings says that Ronaldo is fourth and Messi is fifth in terms of all-time goals scored. This makes me wonder: who are the three players who have scored more goals than these modern-day stars?
Number 3: Ronnie Rooke
People who are interested in the past of English football may know the names Dixie Dean, Nat Lofthouse, and Jimmy Greaves. Rooke, on the other hand, might not be as well known. Even though Rooke wasn’t very well known, he was very good at getting goals.
Rooke played baseball from 1929 to 1961. He was born in Surrey, England. He played center forward and scored a lot of goals for Fulham, Arsenal, and Crystal Palace, among others. Besides that, he played for a number of lower-level football teams in his area, such as Guildford City, Bedford Town, and Haywards Heath Town.
Rooke scored at least 934 goals in 1,030 games, though the RSSSF doesn’t give an exact number, their method suggests that he did. In terms of goals scored, this makes him one of the best in football history, even better than Messi and Ronaldo.
Number 2: Josef Bican
The name Josef Bican is very important in the history of football. People often compare the Czech football star to football giants like Romario and Pele when talking about how many goals they scored.
If you look at the list made by the RSSSF, Pele is 10th with 785 goals and Romario is 11th with 778. But Bican’s numbers are truly amazing. Bican got 722 goals for his club and country, according to the IFFHS. The RSSSF goes even further and says he scored over 950 goals.
As a player, Bican worked for teams like Rapid Vienna and Slavia Prague from the 1930s to the 1950s. His amazing goalscoring skills have been buried by time, but it is clear that he is one of the best football players of all time.
Number 1: Erwin Helmchen
Erwin Helmchen is at the top of the RSSSF’s all-time list of top scorers, but most people today have never heard of him. The German forward played professionally from 1924 to 1951, before the Bundesliga era, and his record of getting goals is truly amazing.
Helmchen is thought to have scored at least 989 goals in only 582 games, which is an amazing rate of 1.7 goals per game. He got 456 goals in just 232 games for PSV Chemnitz, a club that is now in the lower levels of German football. That was his most productive time.
Even though football was very different when Helmchen played, his record of getting goals is still one of the best in the sport’s history, even better than Messi and Ronaldo.
Messi and Ronaldo have been the best football players of all time for more than a decade, but the all-time goalscoring charts show that they are not the only greats who have played the game. Ronnie Rooke, Josef Bican, and Erwin Helmchen may not have as well-known names, but the number of goals they scored makes them some of the best players ever. As football changes, these great people help us remember the sport’s long history.
