The Champions League is the leading playground in Europe in particular and the world in general, so it is not surprising that this tournament brings together the best scorers of all time. Legends like Raul and Andriy Shevchenko dominated the top scorer rankings throughout the 1990s-2000s, while Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi took the art of scoring to the next level. And if you’re curious who this year’s Champions League top scorer is, you can follow the UEFA table, also known as ตารางยูฟ่า in Thai, then let’s take a look at these famous names.
Karim Benzema
Karim Benzema is breaking through strongly in the rankings of the top scorers in Champions League history after the latest double for Real Madrid.
It is hard to believe that despite being 34 years old, Benzema is booming in the knockout stages of the Champions League, in which he has scored 2 consecutive hat-tricks. First, he helped Real Madrid come back up against PSG and second in the quarter-final first leg against Chelsea. Then, the French striker scored another decisive goal in the second leg to send Los Blancos into the semi-finals.
In this season’s Champions League, Benzema has scored 14 goals in 10 games, averaging 1.4 goals per game. When the main rivals Lewandowski (13 goals) and Sebastien Haller (11) both stopped with their team, Benzema is firmly holding the top scorer throne, an achievement that former teammate Ronaldo regularly achieved in the past.
After a hat-trick against Chelsea and two goals last night against Man City, Benzema is the first player in Champions League history to score five away goals in the knockout stages against clubs from a single country in one season.
Besides that milestone, scoring 41 goals in 41 games, plus 13 assists this season is the guarantee for Benzema to become the leading candidate to win the Ballon d’Or.
Robert Lewandowski
The Polish goal-scoring machine has 4 hat-tricks in the Champions League when playing for Bayern Munich. The other time was when he was still playing for Dortmund. In total, Lewandowski has 85 goals in 105 matches in this arena. Of the top 10 hat-tricks scored in the shortest amount of time in a match, Lewandowski featured twice (12 minutes against Salzburg in 2022 and Crvena Zvezda in 2019).
Sebastien Haller
Sebastien Haller just joined Ajax in January 2021 with a transfer fee of $ 25.5 million from West Ham. By this season, he was registered by Ajax to play on the continental front.
Haller went down in history as the first player to score in his first seven Champions League games. He has even more goals in those seven games (11) than he has in 48 Premier League games for West Ham (10 goals). In addition, the Ajax striker is also the fastest player to reach 11 goals in this tournament, with exactly 7 first appearances. The Ivory Coast striker is also the first African star to score 11 goals in a season at Europe’s number one club level.
Those are the top 3 scorers in the Champions League this season. They have devoted fans to beautiful goals and marked their resounding success in their careers.