🔥Mbappé joins CR7 and Messi: top 10 scorers in a year🤯 | OneFootball

The year 2025 gifted us with new records and countless goals, with some players truly making a splash. One standout? Kylian Mbappé. The Frenchman was unstoppable, so much so that he entered the Top 10 most prolific scorers of all time in a calendar year, considering both club and national team performances.

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Not bad for Harry Kane either, but the Englishman, with his 60 goals in 2025, just missed the top rankings by a whisker.

10th place: Cristiano Ronaldo (2012) – 63 goals

It's almost absurd to think that CR7 in 2012, with 63 goals, was "only" the second-best scorer of the year with a significant gap from the first. But we'll talk more about that later.

9th place: Kylian Mbappé (2025) – 66 goals

It had been a long time since a player reached these heights. The Frenchman has now equaled his idol Cristiano Ronaldo, matching the club record of 59 goals scored by Cristiano Ronaldo with Real Madrid in a calendar year. To these, he added another seven goals with France. In this way, Mbappé catapulted himself into the Top 10.

7th place: Cristiano Ronaldo (2013) / Robert Lewandowski (2021) – 69 goals

Cristiano Ronaldo, at the peak of his career in 2013, scored even six more goals than the previous year and thus won his second Ballon d'Or out of five. The same award, however, was denied to Robert Lewandowski during the most prolific period of his career. In 2021, Lewa literally overwhelmed every opponent, but Covid got in the way, and thus the Ballon d'Or was not awarded.

4th place: Romário (2000), Zico (1979), and Pelé (1965) – 72 goals

The "wooden medal" is shared by three of the greatest Brazilians of all time, each belonging to a different generation. Interestingly, Romário, in the most prolific year of his career, was already 34 years old.

3rd place: Pelé (1958) – 75 goals

Pelé held this record for 14 years before being surpassed by a German legend. In 1958, the Brazilian won the World Cup as a teenager and scored prolifically with Santos.

2nd place: Gerd Müller (1972) – 85 goals

The "Bomber of the Nation" dethroned Pelé from the record holder position. His record stood for a remarkable 40 years and was considered practically eternal.

1st place: Lionel Messi (2012) – 91 goals

If it was already hard to imagine how Müller's record could be broken, Lionel Messi's most prolific year in 2012 makes it simply unthinkable that this number could ever be surpassed. Thirteen years ago, La Pulga played as if he came from another planet. He himself never tires of emphasizing that personal numbers have never been that important to him, but we all remember that 2012.

The Godfrey Chitalu Case

It is also right to mention the case of Godfrey Chitalu, a Zambian striker who, according to local sources, scored over 100 goals in a year in 1972. However, for FIFA, this record is not official due to the lack of reliable documentation on many of those goals, often scored in minor competitions or unregulated tournaments. The case resurfaced in 2012 when Messi was approaching Müller's record, but the absence of concrete evidence meant that FIFA did not change its stance.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.

📸 Juan Manuel Serrano Arce - 2025 Getty Images