Ronaldo has scored five goals for Sporting Lisbon, 118 for Manchester United, 450 for Real Madrid, 84 for Juventus and 102 for Portugal – so there is no doubt about his figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the confusion seems to come from his goalscoring rivals of olden days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Data from Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation\u00a0(RSSSF) says Josef Bican is football’s all-time top scorer (excluding players who have never played at the top level) with 805 career goals (from only 530 games), with Romario on 772 and Pele on 767.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bican, who died in 2001, played for five clubs including Rapid Vienna and Slavia Prague as well as Austria and Czechoslovakia – in a career which lasted from 1931 to 1955.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But among the 805 goals were 27 for Rapid’s reserve and amateur teams, as well as strikes which were not in official international games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Remove those and Bican finished his career on\u00a0759 goals in 495 games.\u00a0Well maybe, because RSSSF says some data is partially missing on the Czech second division in 1952.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what of Pele and Romario? Again there is some dispute over their goal tallies – with both Brazilian strikers claiming to have netted over 1,000 goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barcelona’s Lionel Messi recently\u00a0broke Pele’s world record\u00a0of 643 goals for one club… but Santos then claimed Pele’s friendly goals count and he scored 1,091 for the club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pele’s own Instagram bio says he is the “Leading Goal Scorer of All Time (1,283)”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But remove friendly and unofficial strikes (including one for a military team in 1959) and Pele’s 757 goals for Santos, Brazil and New York Cosmos seems to be the figure doing the rounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Romario celebrated his 1,000th goal in 2007 – but that included youth, friendly and testimonial games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Brazilian is credited with 745 goals in a career which took in spells in South America, Europe, Asia and Australia – although that goal tally seems to change from report to report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to answer the question, maybe Ronaldo is the joint top scorer ever. Maybe. Possibly. Not sure actually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We do know Messi is 40 behind after scoring 719 goals for Barcelona and Argentina in an era when stats are recorded more officially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This week, Ronaldo has a chance to maybe break the maybe-record in Wednesday’s Coppa Italia game with Genoa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ronaldo has scored five goals for Sporting Lisbon, 118 for Manchester United, 450 for Real Madrid, 84 for Juventus and 102 for Portugal – so there is no doubt about his figure. But the confusion seems to come from his goalscoring rivals of olden days. Data from Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation\u00a0(RSSSF) says Josef Bican is football’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105,"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newslife.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}