The 10 footballers with the most goal contributions in history

By Eduard Zaloshnja

The debate over who is the greatest footballer of all time will continue endlessly, and chances are that a consensus will never be reached in this debate.

But I, as a statistician, carried out an analysis of the goal contributions of the world’s most distinguished footballers, helped by artificial intelligence models such as Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT. Goal contributions include only goals and assists for goals.

The analysis showed that the Argentine Lionel Messi holds the record with 1,355 goals+assists, followed by the Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo with 1,240 goals+assists (see the table below). The Brazilian Pelé ranks third, but his statistics are approximate, because they were not kept with as much rigour as they are in modern times. Right near him ranks the Hungarian Puskás, and then the Pole Lewandowski, who completes the top five.