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BALLON D’OR winner Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo tended to steal the headlines and demolish yet more records and defences this year, but both will finish behind another gluttonous goalscorer at the top of the club and country total on the final day of 2019.
As Spurs discovered to their cost on the stroke of half-time in what would become a humiliating 7-2 defeat at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in the Champions League in October, Robert Lewandowski needs only the slightest sight of goal to inflict precise pain.
Spurs had been ahead and level before Lewandowski turned and struck with the most lethal of finishes on a grim night for Mauricio Pochettino that hastened the manager’s departure and underlined the striker’s capacity for brilliance.
With 54 goals in 58 games for Bayern and Poland, Lewandowski has comfortably the most goals and the highest ratio of strikes to appearances this calendar year.
He has been helped by Lionel Messi’s injury travails this season, but his more talked-about rival missed the chance to overtake him during December, ending on 50 goals from the same number of games as Lewy.
Messi has not done badly himself. The Argentina magician’s receipt of a record sixth Ballon d’Or reflected the aesthetically dazzling nature of his craft and his ability to change a game breathtakingly quickly, as Liverpool learned in cruel fashion when they were beaten 3-0 at Barcelona in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals in April.
Two goals in seven minutes seemed to have put paid to Liverpool’s hopes of reaching the final, although Messi would undoubtedly trade those goals for the horror show Barca put on in the return leg, when they were vanquished 4-0 at Anfield on arguably the most memorable night of last season’s Champions League.
The bar has been raised from last year, when Messi finished top with 51 goals from 54 matches. He would have done so again had he repeated his feats of 2016, when he scored 59 goals, and 2010, when he netted 60 times.
Of the four occasions in the last decade when Messi has finished top, 2012 stands out. He finished on an incredible 91 goals that year — no other player has scored more than 70 in the last ten years.
The youngest player on the list could justifiably be expected to dominate the ranks for the next ten years.
Kylian Mbappe turned 21 on December 20 and celebrated by scoring twice for Paris Saint Germain the following day to end on 31 goals in 29 Ligue 1 matches in 2019.
Mbappe is the only player on the list to have won the World Cup, scoring France’s final goal in a 4-2 win against Croatia in Russia last year, when his shots on target percentage of nearly 90 per cent was by far and away the highest of any player to score more than two during the tournament.
There is a chance Mbappe will be overtaken by Raheem Sterling should the Manchester City striker find the festive fixtures fruitful. Sterling’s 41 goals from 61 games put him three behind Mbappe going into City’s final matches of the year, when they visit Wolves on December 27 and host Sheffield United on December 29.
Even if he does, Mbappe might claim bragging rights given that he has taken notably fewer games — 49 — to reach 44 goals.
Still, Sterling’s story is stellar this year. Aside from winning the PFA Young Player of the Year Award, the Football Writers’ Award and an honour for his advocacy against racism, the 25-year-old’s surpassing of 40 goals means he will finish two ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo even if he fails to score between now and the end of 2019.
Sterling has been synonymous with hat-tricks this year, scoring four of his five career trebles since January.
In March, he scored three against Watford and for England against the Czech Republic in a Euro 2020 qualifier at Wembley, and on the opening day of the Premier League season his second-half blitz ensured City’s title defence had a striking start with a 5-0 win at West Ham.
The most remarkable of his hat-tricks, though, came against Atalanta at the Etihad Stadium on October 22. In just 11 second-half minutes, Sterling scored the third-fastest Champions League treble in history, eclipsing Ronaldo’s feat for Real Madrid in 2015.
Five weeks later, Lewandowski completed his own hat-trick a minute slower but went one better than Sterling.
Lewandowski scored the fastest ever Champions League quadruple as Bayern hammered Red Star 6-0 in Belgrade to continue the spectacular form that saw the Bundesliga champions win all six of their group stage tests.
That took his tally to ten goals in five games in the competition and cemented Lewandowski as comfortably the top scorer in the group stage for a second season running.
Salzburg sensation Erling Haaland was the nearest player to Lewandowski in the group stage, scoring eight times, while a more familiar name came third, registering six goals.
Harry Kane has had an injury-halted year in a sometimes-troubled Tottenham side, but has still bettered Sterling and Mbappe’s individual totals in the Champions League so far this season.
Unsurprisingly, the England captain has played the joint-fewest games for club and country of the names on the top scorer list, but his record of 34 goals from 44 matches shows how clinical he is.
By comparison, Liverpool’s Sadio Mane has taken 17 more games to score the same number of goals as Kane, although Mane was by far the happier of the adversaries after the pair met in the Champions League final.
The pair are a goal behind Sergio Aguero, who was helped by a February purple patch that would have inspired Sterling at Man City.
Aguero scored Premier League hat-tricks in successive weeks at the Etihad, helping his side to a 3-1 win over Arsenal on February 3 and a 6-0 trouncing of Chelsea on February 10.
The Argentina striker’s run of 35 goals in 49 games leaves him a hat-trick short of a fiery character known to forge fear into any defence attempting to resist Rangers.
As the sixth-highest scorer of the year, Colombia star Alfredo Morelos is a goal behind Ronaldo, with a formidable strike rate of 38 goals from 53 games.
In a tough Europa League group, Rangers progressed ahead of Young Boys, who only missed out on Champions League qualification on away goals in the play-offs, with the help of six goals from Morelos.
That makes the striker, who sent Rangers on their way to the group stage with a hat-trick in qualifying, the top scorer in the competition so far.
Manager Steven Gerrard will now hope Morelos can avoid any more of the disciplinary issues that saw the Scottish Premiership’s current leading marksman sent off for goading Motherwell fans after scoring against them on December 15.
Gerrard feels the best is yet to come from the 23-year-old, who only debuted for his country towards the end of 2018 and signed a new contract at Rangers in March.
Arch-rivals and fellow Europa League knockout stage qualifiers Celtic could be about to sign the striker behind Morelos in this year’s hall of fame for forwards.
Andraz Sporar secures seventh with a potent display of 36 goals in 46 appearances for Slovenia and Slovan Bratislava, although he was unable to help Slovan secure more than a solitary win in the Europa League proper as they finished well short of second-placed Wolves in their group.
That is likely to put Celtic, who finished top of their group, in a strong position to sign Sporar. Hoops coach Neil Lennon has confirmed that negotiations have begun.
Between Morelos and Sterling on the list, Ronaldo has hit 39 goals in 49 matches and has the distinction of being the only leading scorer to have picked up international silverware this year.
The Juventus goal machine captained Portugal to glory in the inaugural Nations League, sending them on their way on home soil with a hat-trick in the semi-final against Switzerland on June 5, including two goals in the final three minutes of normal time.
Ominously for Portugal’s foes at Euro 2020, Ronaldo has had his most prolific year at international level, scoring 14 times and closing in on the record for a player of 109 national goals, set by Iran’s Ali Daei.
He scored four in Lithuania in a Euro Qualifier in September, including a 15-minute second-half hat-trick.
Ronaldo reached 99 goals for his country without being fully fit and can become the second male player ever to reach 100 international goals when Portugal begin their preparations for the tournament in March.
His response to the suggestion that he could beat Daei’s mighty total was steely: “All records must be broken and I will beat that record,” Ronaldo promised, adding: “When it comes to sacrificing myself for my club and my national team, I do it with pride.”
Injuries inevitably have their say on defining the leading scorers but, at 34, Ronaldo does not seem unduly hampered by fitness concerns, while Lewandowski played through a groin problem that he has now had an operation on. — Daily Mail
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