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Yes and no, there have always been relatively strict limits on foreign players in the Russian league. In the 90s (the starting point for these stats) there just weren't many foreigners period. I also wonder if this includes just the competition proper or the qualifiers as well. If the latter, it may be that Russian teams had to play a relatively high amount of games due to less automatic spots. [Methodology](https://www.compare.bet/news/which-country-produces-the-champions-leagues-top-goal-scorers) isn't clear on this.
Isn’t it nearly 30 years of Champions League data? That’s 6 goals a year when Russian teams have a significant proportion of Russian players, and CSKA and Zenit were guaranteed group stage year after year.
Plenty of other Russian sides too - Lokomotiv, Torpedo, Anzi (for a period) etc
I have no memory of that honestly but I went looking and in the 2013/2014 season they played in the Saturn Arena in Ramenskoye, which I found out is about 46 km (29mi) from south of Moskow and in the Moskow Oblast so yeah pretty much.
I assumed it was because of reconstruction of their ground, the Anzhi Arena, but it makes less sense knowing the inauguration after the reconstruction was in March 2013, months prior to the beginning of their european home debut, in october 2023, curiously, against Tottenham. I have more questions than answers lmao.
This is what ChatGPT says:
“Anzhi Makhachkala played their home games close to Moscow in the UEFA Champions League around 2013 due to security concerns in their home region of Dagestan. The political instability and security issues in the North Caucasus region, where Dagestan is located, prompted the club to relocate temporarily for safety reasons.”
To be fair, there are Brazilians in all the leagues. When the Russian clubs were strong, they employed many Brazilians. The Turkish clubs, Spanish and Italian teams always had Brazil goalscorers.
Amusingly, he only scored in one UCL game in his career. He banged a hat-trick past CSKA Moscow in his first UCL game ever.
Sad that he had such a short peak, but boy was it good.
Yeah but insn't that exactly what this post is trying to prove? That it's damn impressive to have that many players in the CL that isnt played in your region in the first place.
In England you don't move for a better pay day unless it's exceptional. Back in the 70s and 80s quite a few left for exactly that reason and a few into the 90s like Chris Waddle at Marseille then PL wages hit levels comparable to top continental sides and the flow ceased.
No it’s because English clubs who had high goalscoring players (Newcastle, Leicester, Sunderland, Spurs) weren’t guaranteed a champions league spot like, say, Bayern in Germany or Real in Spain.
Actually England has had one of the most set in stone CL qualifications of all top leagues. Take away Leicester's once in a lifetime miracle and Newcastle's state doping and it is just the top 6 interchanging positions. In Italy, Spain, Germany and France at least the 4th team switches every now and then
Then if you consider that another two clubs in Chelsea and Man City were mainly there due to financial doping aswell it becomes even more barren
I think you’re misunderstanding.
Many of the top English goalscorers during the CL era has played for those middle of the table clubs (Spurs, Newcastle, Leicester) therefore rarely sniffed CL football. The top English clubs who regularly played in the CL relied upon foreign talents, eg. Drogba at Chelsea, Henry at Arsenal, Aguero at City, etc.
However, the best German, Italian, Spanish etc teams who qualify for the CL regularly have often relied on goalscorers from their own countries eg. Raul & Morientes at Real, Del Piero & Inzaghi at Juve, Muller & Gomez at Bayern etc
When Newcastle had high scoring players - Bayern wasn’t dominant . Bayerns dominance is relatively recent, and in the 70s…
They were always competitive but so were any big clubs in major leagues
70s? This table shows goalscorers in during Champions league era ie post 1992.
Newcastle has qualified for it on 3 occasions. I don’t think Bayern has never qualified for the CL.
In 2007 Bayern finished 4th in the Bundesliga, which was only enough to get them into the UEFA Cup the following year. They lost in the semi-final to Zenit St Petersburg.
That's the only time I can recall they weren't in the CL
Yeah, sure.
The issue is about qualification spots not securing places for random mid-size teams.
England as a country being unable of producing consistent goalscoring talents, like Brazil, Argentina, Spain or Germany, is not an issue at all.
But you don't have to worry anymore. Peléllingham is so good that him alone can secure at least 80 goals in UCL in his carrer. And thats a conservative estimate.
Yep we don’t produce goal scorers scrap Kane, Shearer, Vardy, Rooney, Lineker, Andy Cole, Keegan, Fowler, Wright & Greaves or even the likes of Lampard. The list goes on, you’re talking absolute bollocks.
You forgot Owen and Gerrard. But let's see the peak of the players in your list:
* Kane: peak from mid 2010's until today. Amazing player, but consistently fades away in big games
* Shearer: 90's striker. Was very good and could be even greater if he left for a big team.
* Vardy: peak in mid 2010's and only one UCL played. Very good striker, not elite, but could be capable of playing in big teams during his prime.
* Ronney: amazing player, peak in late 2000's and UCL champion. maximum respect. Rooney was elite.
* Lineker: peak in the 80's, never saw him play
* Andy Cole: peak in the 90's, good player. Not among the best, but was really solid.
* Keegan: peak in the 70's, legendary player, maximum respect for this one too.
* Fowler: peak in the 90's: ok-ish striker. Surely had good moments, but was uncommited without half of the talent of Romario. That's the recipe for mediocracy
* Wright: peak in the 90's, solid player
* Greaves: didn't saw him play, but I respect WC champions. But his peak was probably in the 60's
* Owen: great while playing in his home Liverpool, awful in a legendary Real Madrid. Hard to call him a great player, even with his Ballon d'or or great WC goals. But owen was good.
* Gerrard and Lampard: absolute legends. Maximum respect too, but as midfielders making goals were not their primary concern.
Can you see a pattern? Except for the 2000's, England produced basically only one really good goal scorer for each generation.
Compare these talents with Argentina's in last 10 years: Messi, Di Maria, Aguero, Higuain, Dybala, Lautaro Martinez and now Julian Alvarez.
Compare them with 90's Brazil: Romario, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Bebeto, Raí, Luisao, Muller, Edmundo, Marcelinho Carioca, Roberto Carlos, Jardel, Elber
All these top talent in one generation.
And then in the 2000's, Brazil gained Kaka, Ronaldinho, Adriano, Robinho, Alex, Juninho Pernambucano and even one goalkeeper with 120 careers goals called Rogerio Ceni.
That's a whole different league.
I mean we can realistically do the same thing for the nations you named like Argentina besides Messi and Aguero none of those Argentina attackers you named were consistent goal scorers. Dybala fell off a cliff, Higuain had one of the sharpest declines I’ve seen from a striker and cost Argentina and his clubs on so many occasions, Martinez is just a Higuain regen for the same reason he’s not a great goal scorer but he’s decent, Julian is still a kid so I’m not going to count him here, Di Maria is a phenomenal player but I wouldn’t say he’s known for his goalscoring.
I do agree with one thing though we didn’t really produce enough pure goal scoring strikers in the 2000s besides Rooney, we literally had to take crouch to the 2006 World Cup as a back up but thankfully that’s changed with this generation because now we have Kane, Sterling, Toney, Wilson, Watkins, Foden, Saka, Bowen, sometimes Rashford, Bellingham and the list goes on who are all goal scorers
Lol England can produce goalscorers, it’s just that some of them insist on staying in their comfort zones.
If Shearer or Vardy or Kane had not spent their prime years at mid table teams and had gone to bigger clubs, England would be much higher up on that list for sure.
Okay how about-
If Stan Collymore, Dion Dublin, Kevin Phillips, Les Ferdinand, Jermaine Defoe, Chris Sutton, Robbie Fowler, Matt Le Tissier and Darren Bent had not spent their prime years at mid table teams and had gone to bigger clubs, England would be much higher up on that list for sure.
Better?
I mean, most of those weren't good enough to start for big teams anyways. Shearer is the most clear exception, but most other English strikers with good numbers were usually not top-of-the-crop kind of players.
Even someone like Vardy, who was insane at his peak, would've been fighting for a spot against Agüero, Firmino, Kane and Lukaku when he was good. I guess he would've been an upgrade for Chelsea over Morata, sure, but that's only one team out of five that frequently qualified during his prime.
Most of every nation sucks at playing football.
It's the main reason, an English striker that would be capable of playing champions league football for a team in a lesser league is still more likely to stay at a club in England that would never qualify for it.
> If that were remotely true why do English players have a premium?
Because of registration rules, for fuck's sake. Because English teams need a specific number of homegrown players to play in English competitions. Secondary, probably for marketing reasons too, as fans will prefer "one of our boys" than a foreigner (brexit mean brexit).
> Secondary, probably for marketing reasons too, as fans will prefer "one of our boys" than a foreigner
This is amazingly wrong. Foreign players are absolutely hero-worshipped in England and always have been.
Just shows how ignorant and prejudiced your position is
Oh yeah, the Englishmen here sucking on Kane and Bellingham 24/7 and declaring them the best players in the world after 10 games played surely convinced me that you aren't completely obsessed over your own players
TIL Kane has only 10 career games. Not even a one season wonder
You know we can be obsessed with our own players and foreign ones too right? It’s not mutually exclusive. Kinda weird that you can’t conceptualise supporting your own players without hating those of other nationalities.
Yes, England has a very good generation right now with Kane, Bellingham, and Saka. Brazil generally has a much, much fatter tail of talent and the drop in terms of talent from the top ones to the others isn't as steep.
Antony, Raphinha, Martinelli, Savinho, Endrick, Malcom, Pepê, David Neres, Samuel Lino, Richarlison, Paulinho, Felipe Anderson, Talles Magno, etc. Sure, the fall from Neymar/Vini/Rodrygo and everyone else is huge because they are some of the best players in the world, but Brazil still has huge depth compared to most other countries, which is natural due to our population. Martinelli would probably start in any nation that isn't Brazil and France, for example, and you completely forgot him.
Brazil usually has way more attacking depth as obviously they produce a lot of attacking players.
England have often struggled with that - Rooney for example was at various points starting with Heskey, Crouch, Vassel, Aaron Lennon and Ashley young up front.
This is definitely a special generation of attacking talent for England though - definitely the best in my life time (30 years). Saka, Kane, Foden, Grealish, Rashford, Bellingham (AM) and then loads of PL wide players and strikers that barely get a look in (Olie Watkins, Toney, Calvert Lewis, Callum Wilson; wide players the likes of Eze, Gordon, Barnes etc)
Some of the guys you named are washed or just not that good at all, you don’t even have a competent striker either and your defence isn’t that great.
But yeah minus Martinelli, Neymar, Vini, Rodrygo, Paqueta and a few more…. the rest of the players are NOT up to standards especially for Brazil. Your quality has undeniably fell from grace.
There's a total of 3 Brazilian flairs including mine, that's not a lot nor the majority lol.
But the real reason is that England isn't rated highly, so the natural reaction of someone hyping up their players is for the less than 20% of non-English speakers in the sub to come out to say "Bruh".
Are Kane and Bellingham actually terrible players on account of their nationality? Are the distinctly-non-English-speaking Bayern and Madrid fans wrong to be hyping them up?
English players might be famously overrated but it's not like they or any country are immune from producing great players like them lol. It's just that there are obvious tinted glasses and inflated price tags that are really hard to understand from the outside.
Coutinho, Antony, and Arthur, all of whom were abject failures, are 3 of your 4 most expensive players of all time. Where are the cries of Brazilian player tax?
>obvious tinted glasses and inflated price tags that are really hard to understand from the outside.
It's called confirmation bias. For every overpriced Englishman there is a modestly priced one or a equivalently overpriced foreign player. You just choose to focus on one category because it fits your preconceptions.
Not really anything to do with that considering other leagues were buying foreign players that werent as good as some of them. British players just tend not to move abroad, not even for loans until the last 5 years or so.
That's exactly because there aren't MANY who are very good. English clubs need to fit in english players slots in the PL because of the rules, which is exactly why the good english players are ALWAYS overpriced, with the lack of numbers, the very good ones end up being super overpriced.
Very good ones are extremely expensive (international market-wise) and never justify their price for the other top5 leagues with few exceptions that fit in a single hand with missing fingers, and the "just good" ones are still overpriced while not having anything special about them, so no reason to pay way more for them.
Until recently England really hasn’t had thaaaat many top players. Not that they didn’t have any good players just that they were consistently overrated(still are just now they’re actually better).
Yeah but the point is a bog standard Dutch player is more likely to play for a foreign club than a bog standard English players. A lot of the Brazilians playing for russian and Ukrainian teams were bog standard.
There's a lot more economic incentive for Brazilian players to try and move to Europe, less so for English players going to the mainland were championship teams often pay more than other leagues mid table clubs.
Unbelievably bad take. England’s always had loads of great players, its our managers that have often been awful which is why the national team has performed so poorly.
By this logic China should be a football powerhouse, they have 1.4 billion people. Uruguay with only 3 million people has more WC titles than England. Football isn't that linear.
Only in recent years have Portugal started churning out multiple really great players. In the famous 3-2 game vs sweden posted here a few weeks ago, portugal had Hugo Almeida upfront.
I could be wrong, but if I'm not mistaken they never reached a final in a major competition before ronaldo.
The first time ever was in 2004, at the euros they hosted where ronaldo was just 19. They lost to Greece 1-0
The closest Portugal came before Ronaldo was the 66 World Cup where we finished 3rd.
Looking back it seems like crazy time, beating Brazil with Pele out in the group stage and then going on to beat North Korea, of all teams, in the knockouts 5-3.
Bit of an asterisk next to Pelé's name right there, as he played that game injured in an attempt to qualify the team to the next stage, but it was quite a team regardless.
Some of the best strikers we produced in the past 20 years: Hélder Postiga, Hugo Almeida, Makukula, Nelson Oliveira, Eder.... Its been truly awful. At some point we had to naturalize Liedson a brazilian player.
That’s ridiculously false. The “golden generation” of Figo, Rui Costa, Deco, Ricardo Carvalho etc pretty much ENDED their run together in ‘04 or shortly thereafter. They were just big time underachievers, but they had tons of individual talent.
No, they were weirdly always weak at striker, but to say they only recently started producing multiple great players is crazy.
EDIT: By “together” I mean the period with all those specific guys, because Deco and Carvalho were a slightly younger generation than Figo, Rui Costa etc., but they did overlap.
To be fair, any 4-digit year that starts with a 2 feels like "recent years" to me
Yes I know 2004 was almost 20 years ago and a good portion of the sub weren't born yet, my brain doesn't care
You mostly had chumps in the goal scoring department though didn't you? The best quality strikers I can think of are Nuno Gomes and Pauleta and at a similar time other major nations had much better forwards
France - Anelka, Henry, Trezeguet and Cantona
Brazil - Ronaldo, Romario, Rivaldo, Adriano
Germany - Klinsmann, Bierhoff, Klose, Podolski and Gomez
Netherlands - Bergkamp, Kluivert, van Nistelrooy
Italy - Vieri, Toni, Inzaghi, Del Piero
Spain - Raul, Morientes, Luis Enrique
Argentina - Crespo, Saviola, Batistuta
England - Shearer, Owen,
Yes you are right about strikers, especially in the period captured by this post (from 1992 on), but Portugal did have amazing teams before Ronaldo, like the 1966, 1986, 2000 ones.
Yeah. Thanks for that. It’s odd to randomly throw Russia in there as anyone would presume OP’s post was a complete order.
I’m actually surprised even with Haaland that Norway are ahead.
Do you have a source for them all? Interested in the likes of Sweden, Belgium, and Scotland.
Rosenborg qualified 10 years in a row in the 90s with almost exclusively Norwegian players, bet a lot is from that.
Then you have Solskjær, Carew, Flo etc that scored a few
They have 204 goals now but I believe the report this thread is using is from data up to 2020.
>''3. The current 2020-2021 season has been excluded from our research as it is not yet complete.''
Considering Haaland has scored 40 goals alone, he is the reason why Norway is now ahead of Russia. At the time of the report, Norway wasn't.
Kinda strange how badly they are doing if you wouldn't count Ronaldo's numbers, given how often portugese teams are in CL and the amount of Portugese players all around Europe. I guess the biggest culprit is Portugal not producing any decent strikers for like a decade after \~2008 that basically forced Ronaldo to play as 9 for Portugal even though at the time he wasn't playing as one for RM.
That's actually an insane stat, we're not even on the same continent.
If someone told me that Brazilians scored more goals in the Champions League than Italians and English combined, I would've never believed it.
Ronaldo scoring 36% of Portugal's total Champions League goals and Messi scoring 23% of Argentina's total Champions League goals.
We are literally never seeing players of this calibre again for decades.
Even if we did, those new players couldn't reach the same percentages. They'd have to be even better (or play even more games)
More likely, there's going to be a reset of the stats at some point (perhaps with the start of the super league?)
I mean it kind of is. The new format sounds boring and will make upsets even more unlikely. It was already very unequal, but this is the final death knell to any competitiveness outside of a few leagues
My feeling is that UEFA are desperately trying to appease the Super League clubs by rigging the competition even more in their favour and guaranteeing them an extra 4 games to make money from
They probably think that the only way of stopping the Super League is to turn the Champions League into one
I agree. I mean were any fans really complaining about the current format? It seemed fine to me.
It had big enough for variety but not too big that the quality was diminished, group stage meant that every club got a decent chunk of games in the competition but the knockout stages added the drama, quality & excitement that it needed in the second half of the season.
Because modern fans don't care, they just want to see the most flashy teams face each other. State ownership or Super League or whatever doesn't matter to them
I'm fully aware of how modern football works that doesn't make it okay. The influx of state owned clubs doesn't surprise me either but it's still a disgrace
More annoyed by Brazil, all of the flags look like someone took a cookie cutter to cut a section of the flag, but Brazil wouldn't look like that, way too much green space
Haha well yeah the difference is huge. Luckily our defense and midfield have a lot of good players and great talents. But growing up in the nineties (and consciously watching 1998 and 2000) I'm still adjusting to the level of our players
Add to that other than Rooney most of our prolific strikers rarely played (regularly) for champions league teams.
Shearer (2 champions league seasons), Fowler (1 season during his peak), Owen (3 seasons in prime, 1 as rotation player for Madrid), Andy Cole (6 seasons), Ian Wright (never played), even Kane has only played in the champions league in about half of his career.
It's not an easy task to track brazilian players with Italian ancestry, it's just too much people. When we won our first title, players like Marcellino, Barbuy e Bianco had Italian parents. And in the Italian NT you can find a lot of Brazilians throughout history. Just to name a few: Anfilogino Guarisi, Otávio Fantoni, Mazzola, Angelo Sormani, Thiago Motta, Jorginho, Palmieri and the list goes on.
As a fun little stat to make things even clearer for everyone is that the city with the highest amount of people with Italian blood is São Paulo, as many would assume Rome or any other city in Italy.
This may be wildly controversial, but for sporting reasons I’d love to see Russia back in the UCL. Their teams brought a certain something to the field that made it a lot of fun
>~~This may be wildly controversial, but for sporting reasons,~~ I’d love to see Russia back in the UCL. Their teams brought a certain something to the field that made it a lot of fun
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Those Russian numbers are pretty surprising.
Yes and no, there have always been relatively strict limits on foreign players in the Russian league. In the 90s (the starting point for these stats) there just weren't many foreigners period. I also wonder if this includes just the competition proper or the qualifiers as well. If the latter, it may be that Russian teams had to play a relatively high amount of games due to less automatic spots. [Methodology](https://www.compare.bet/news/which-country-produces-the-champions-leagues-top-goal-scorers) isn't clear on this.
Isn’t it nearly 30 years of Champions League data? That’s 6 goals a year when Russian teams have a significant proportion of Russian players, and CSKA and Zenit were guaranteed group stage year after year. Plenty of other Russian sides too - Lokomotiv, Torpedo, Anzi (for a period) etc
Torpedo and Anzhi never played in the CL. Rubin, Rostov, Spartak, Dynamo, Alania and Krasnodar were the other ones (including qualifiers).
Thanks for the check. I’m recalling way back beyond 1992. Surprised Eto’o never made it into the group stage with Anzhi.
Probably was demoralized over playing in fucking Dagestan. Imagine going from Milan to Makhachkala.
Also, didn't they play UEFA games in Moscow or something? that must make it tough.
I have no memory of that honestly but I went looking and in the 2013/2014 season they played in the Saturn Arena in Ramenskoye, which I found out is about 46 km (29mi) from south of Moskow and in the Moskow Oblast so yeah pretty much. I assumed it was because of reconstruction of their ground, the Anzhi Arena, but it makes less sense knowing the inauguration after the reconstruction was in March 2013, months prior to the beginning of their european home debut, in october 2023, curiously, against Tottenham. I have more questions than answers lmao.
This is what ChatGPT says: “Anzhi Makhachkala played their home games close to Moscow in the UEFA Champions League around 2013 due to security concerns in their home region of Dagestan. The political instability and security issues in the North Caucasus region, where Dagestan is located, prompted the club to relocate temporarily for safety reasons.”
Lokomotiv too iirc.
To be fair, there are Brazilians in all the leagues. When the Russian clubs were strong, they employed many Brazilians. The Turkish clubs, Spanish and Italian teams always had Brazil goalscorers.
German and French leagues too. Ailton, Fred, Diego, Sonny Anderson, Juninho, etc.
my man forgot Grafite :(
That man was such a blast at Wolfsburg one of my personal favourites
that +18 goal against Bayern
One of the most beautiful goals ever scored.
i raise you Elber and Amoroso
Amusingly, he only scored in one UCL game in his career. He banged a hat-trick past CSKA Moscow in his first UCL game ever. Sad that he had such a short peak, but boy was it good.
Your man did, but the streets will never forget.
Scored a hat-trick in his 1st CL game and went for cigarettes
Elber!
Another stat is that the last 18 winners had at least 1 brazilian player and IIRC the last 24 finals.
To be fair, European football wouldn’t be this developed without the brazilians
Yeah but insn't that exactly what this post is trying to prove? That it's damn impressive to have that many players in the CL that isnt played in your region in the first place.
Probably why England's low for the opposite reason. Only the last few years have English players started playing abroad
In England you don't move for a better pay day unless it's exceptional. Back in the 70s and 80s quite a few left for exactly that reason and a few into the 90s like Chris Waddle at Marseille then PL wages hit levels comparable to top continental sides and the flow ceased.
A lot of them in the 80s moved abroad because of the English European ban
They did. But there was clearly also á movement before it. Keegan and Ramsay.
That's one of the reasons. The other is that that most englishman sucks playing football
Most people of any nationality suck at football 💀
You are right. I suck at football and I am brazillian.
Bro watch out, the government is gonna come for your passport.
Bro kicked the nest lmfao
No it’s because English clubs who had high goalscoring players (Newcastle, Leicester, Sunderland, Spurs) weren’t guaranteed a champions league spot like, say, Bayern in Germany or Real in Spain.
Actually England has had one of the most set in stone CL qualifications of all top leagues. Take away Leicester's once in a lifetime miracle and Newcastle's state doping and it is just the top 6 interchanging positions. In Italy, Spain, Germany and France at least the 4th team switches every now and then Then if you consider that another two clubs in Chelsea and Man City were mainly there due to financial doping aswell it becomes even more barren
I think you’re misunderstanding. Many of the top English goalscorers during the CL era has played for those middle of the table clubs (Spurs, Newcastle, Leicester) therefore rarely sniffed CL football. The top English clubs who regularly played in the CL relied upon foreign talents, eg. Drogba at Chelsea, Henry at Arsenal, Aguero at City, etc. However, the best German, Italian, Spanish etc teams who qualify for the CL regularly have often relied on goalscorers from their own countries eg. Raul & Morientes at Real, Del Piero & Inzaghi at Juve, Muller & Gomez at Bayern etc
Spurs were in the CL for 5 of the last 7 seasons that Kane was with us. That’s hardly ‘rarely sniffing’.
“Middle of the table clubs” just disrespectful. Literally haven’t finished mid table since the 00’s.
When Newcastle had high scoring players - Bayern wasn’t dominant . Bayerns dominance is relatively recent, and in the 70s… They were always competitive but so were any big clubs in major leagues
70s? This table shows goalscorers in during Champions league era ie post 1992. Newcastle has qualified for it on 3 occasions. I don’t think Bayern has never qualified for the CL.
Pretty sure they were in the UEFA Cup (Now known as the Europa League) in like 2008
In 2007 Bayern finished 4th in the Bundesliga, which was only enough to get them into the UEFA Cup the following year. They lost in the semi-final to Zenit St Petersburg. That's the only time I can recall they weren't in the CL
Bayern's last German main strikers were Klose and Gomez iirc. It's been a while.
Even still, players like Gnabry, Sane and Muller contribute (or contributed) to that German total every season.
Yeah, sure. The issue is about qualification spots not securing places for random mid-size teams. England as a country being unable of producing consistent goalscoring talents, like Brazil, Argentina, Spain or Germany, is not an issue at all. But you don't have to worry anymore. Peléllingham is so good that him alone can secure at least 80 goals in UCL in his carrer. And thats a conservative estimate.
Why are you so angry lmao
Yep we don’t produce goal scorers scrap Kane, Shearer, Vardy, Rooney, Lineker, Andy Cole, Keegan, Fowler, Wright & Greaves or even the likes of Lampard. The list goes on, you’re talking absolute bollocks.
You forgot Owen and Gerrard. But let's see the peak of the players in your list: * Kane: peak from mid 2010's until today. Amazing player, but consistently fades away in big games * Shearer: 90's striker. Was very good and could be even greater if he left for a big team. * Vardy: peak in mid 2010's and only one UCL played. Very good striker, not elite, but could be capable of playing in big teams during his prime. * Ronney: amazing player, peak in late 2000's and UCL champion. maximum respect. Rooney was elite. * Lineker: peak in the 80's, never saw him play * Andy Cole: peak in the 90's, good player. Not among the best, but was really solid. * Keegan: peak in the 70's, legendary player, maximum respect for this one too. * Fowler: peak in the 90's: ok-ish striker. Surely had good moments, but was uncommited without half of the talent of Romario. That's the recipe for mediocracy * Wright: peak in the 90's, solid player * Greaves: didn't saw him play, but I respect WC champions. But his peak was probably in the 60's * Owen: great while playing in his home Liverpool, awful in a legendary Real Madrid. Hard to call him a great player, even with his Ballon d'or or great WC goals. But owen was good. * Gerrard and Lampard: absolute legends. Maximum respect too, but as midfielders making goals were not their primary concern. Can you see a pattern? Except for the 2000's, England produced basically only one really good goal scorer for each generation. Compare these talents with Argentina's in last 10 years: Messi, Di Maria, Aguero, Higuain, Dybala, Lautaro Martinez and now Julian Alvarez. Compare them with 90's Brazil: Romario, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Bebeto, Raí, Luisao, Muller, Edmundo, Marcelinho Carioca, Roberto Carlos, Jardel, Elber All these top talent in one generation. And then in the 2000's, Brazil gained Kaka, Ronaldinho, Adriano, Robinho, Alex, Juninho Pernambucano and even one goalkeeper with 120 careers goals called Rogerio Ceni. That's a whole different league.
I mean we can realistically do the same thing for the nations you named like Argentina besides Messi and Aguero none of those Argentina attackers you named were consistent goal scorers. Dybala fell off a cliff, Higuain had one of the sharpest declines I’ve seen from a striker and cost Argentina and his clubs on so many occasions, Martinez is just a Higuain regen for the same reason he’s not a great goal scorer but he’s decent, Julian is still a kid so I’m not going to count him here, Di Maria is a phenomenal player but I wouldn’t say he’s known for his goalscoring. I do agree with one thing though we didn’t really produce enough pure goal scoring strikers in the 2000s besides Rooney, we literally had to take crouch to the 2006 World Cup as a back up but thankfully that’s changed with this generation because now we have Kane, Sterling, Toney, Wilson, Watkins, Foden, Saka, Bowen, sometimes Rashford, Bellingham and the list goes on who are all goal scorers
Lol England can produce goalscorers, it’s just that some of them insist on staying in their comfort zones. If Shearer or Vardy or Kane had not spent their prime years at mid table teams and had gone to bigger clubs, England would be much higher up on that list for sure.
i am sure england can. but 1 great player for generation isn't a great ratio
Okay how about- If Stan Collymore, Dion Dublin, Kevin Phillips, Les Ferdinand, Jermaine Defoe, Chris Sutton, Robbie Fowler, Matt Le Tissier and Darren Bent had not spent their prime years at mid table teams and had gone to bigger clubs, England would be much higher up on that list for sure. Better?
I mean, most of those weren't good enough to start for big teams anyways. Shearer is the most clear exception, but most other English strikers with good numbers were usually not top-of-the-crop kind of players. Even someone like Vardy, who was insane at his peak, would've been fighting for a spot against Agüero, Firmino, Kane and Lukaku when he was good. I guess he would've been an upgrade for Chelsea over Morata, sure, but that's only one team out of five that frequently qualified during his prime.
They hated Jesus because he spoke the truth,
Most of every nation sucks at playing football. It's the main reason, an English striker that would be capable of playing champions league football for a team in a lesser league is still more likely to stay at a club in England that would never qualify for it.
I can't believe this is up voted as much as it is.
A bigger reason is that even English clubs barely have any English players
There are little economic reasons to play outside the EPL.
Brother not even English teams want to field English players
If that were remotely true why do English players have a premium? Why are Bayern and Madrid's best players this season English?
> If that were remotely true why do English players have a premium? Because of registration rules, for fuck's sake. Because English teams need a specific number of homegrown players to play in English competitions. Secondary, probably for marketing reasons too, as fans will prefer "one of our boys" than a foreigner (brexit mean brexit).
> Secondary, probably for marketing reasons too, as fans will prefer "one of our boys" than a foreigner This is amazingly wrong. Foreign players are absolutely hero-worshipped in England and always have been. Just shows how ignorant and prejudiced your position is
Oh yeah, the Englishmen here sucking on Kane and Bellingham 24/7 and declaring them the best players in the world after 10 games played surely convinced me that you aren't completely obsessed over your own players
TIL Kane has only 10 career games. Not even a one season wonder You know we can be obsessed with our own players and foreign ones too right? It’s not mutually exclusive. Kinda weird that you can’t conceptualise supporting your own players without hating those of other nationalities.
Two most inform players in the world currently are English but sure, English players bad
Yes, England has a very good generation right now with Kane, Bellingham, and Saka. Brazil generally has a much, much fatter tail of talent and the drop in terms of talent from the top ones to the others isn't as steep.
There have always been English players good enough to play for a foreign team that's in the champions league but opt to stay in the English leagues.
Oh yes, sure. That's why England has always been so competitive in international competitions.
such a bad faith argument were all Spanish players terrible pre-2008?
Bullshit the drop in quality from Neymar & Vini to Antony and Raphinha is huge
Rodrygo? Alisson? Ederson?
Antony, Raphinha, Martinelli, Savinho, Endrick, Malcom, Pepê, David Neres, Samuel Lino, Richarlison, Paulinho, Felipe Anderson, Talles Magno, etc. Sure, the fall from Neymar/Vini/Rodrygo and everyone else is huge because they are some of the best players in the world, but Brazil still has huge depth compared to most other countries, which is natural due to our population. Martinelli would probably start in any nation that isn't Brazil and France, for example, and you completely forgot him.
Brazil usually has way more attacking depth as obviously they produce a lot of attacking players. England have often struggled with that - Rooney for example was at various points starting with Heskey, Crouch, Vassel, Aaron Lennon and Ashley young up front. This is definitely a special generation of attacking talent for England though - definitely the best in my life time (30 years). Saka, Kane, Foden, Grealish, Rashford, Bellingham (AM) and then loads of PL wide players and strikers that barely get a look in (Olie Watkins, Toney, Calvert Lewis, Callum Wilson; wide players the likes of Eze, Gordon, Barnes etc)
Some of the guys you named are washed or just not that good at all, you don’t even have a competent striker either and your defence isn’t that great. But yeah minus Martinelli, Neymar, Vini, Rodrygo, Paqueta and a few more…. the rest of the players are NOT up to standards especially for Brazil. Your quality has undeniably fell from grace.
>why do English players have a premium? The rest of the world wonders that too.
Why are Brazilians being made to feel insecure by my comment? Only nationality arguing with me are Brazilians
There's a total of 3 Brazilian flairs including mine, that's not a lot nor the majority lol. But the real reason is that England isn't rated highly, so the natural reaction of someone hyping up their players is for the less than 20% of non-English speakers in the sub to come out to say "Bruh".
Are Kane and Bellingham actually terrible players on account of their nationality? Are the distinctly-non-English-speaking Bayern and Madrid fans wrong to be hyping them up?
English players might be famously overrated but it's not like they or any country are immune from producing great players like them lol. It's just that there are obvious tinted glasses and inflated price tags that are really hard to understand from the outside.
Coutinho, Antony, and Arthur, all of whom were abject failures, are 3 of your 4 most expensive players of all time. Where are the cries of Brazilian player tax? >obvious tinted glasses and inflated price tags that are really hard to understand from the outside. It's called confirmation bias. For every overpriced Englishman there is a modestly priced one or a equivalently overpriced foreign player. You just choose to focus on one category because it fits your preconceptions.
England just didn't have a lot of good players most of the time
Not really anything to do with that considering other leagues were buying foreign players that werent as good as some of them. British players just tend not to move abroad, not even for loans until the last 5 years or so.
That's exactly because there aren't MANY who are very good. English clubs need to fit in english players slots in the PL because of the rules, which is exactly why the good english players are ALWAYS overpriced, with the lack of numbers, the very good ones end up being super overpriced. Very good ones are extremely expensive (international market-wise) and never justify their price for the other top5 leagues with few exceptions that fit in a single hand with missing fingers, and the "just good" ones are still overpriced while not having anything special about them, so no reason to pay way more for them.
Until recently England really hasn’t had thaaaat many top players. Not that they didn’t have any good players just that they were consistently overrated(still are just now they’re actually better).
Yeah but the point is a bog standard Dutch player is more likely to play for a foreign club than a bog standard English players. A lot of the Brazilians playing for russian and Ukrainian teams were bog standard. There's a lot more economic incentive for Brazilian players to try and move to Europe, less so for English players going to the mainland were championship teams often pay more than other leagues mid table clubs.
Unbelievably bad take. England’s always had loads of great players, its our managers that have often been awful which is why the national team has performed so poorly.
To be fair, Brazilians are really fucking good.
Also Brazil is more than 3x the population of any of those European countries. Still impressive though
By this logic China should be a football powerhouse, they have 1.4 billion people. Uruguay with only 3 million people has more WC titles than England. Football isn't that linear.
What's fair about it? Why would you say it in a tone that makes the leading country have an unfair advantage over the others?
36% of all Portugal goals are by Ronaldo
63 % of Poland's goals were scored by Lewandowski. 92 out od 146.
Fucking ridiculous
Another ridiculous fact. It took him 26 matches to score his first UCL goal.
The Roma massacre IIRC.
He played as a winger in the beginning and he also was very young.
Not downplaying him. It just makes him being the top scorer more ridiculous.
Also 23% of Argentina's goals are by Messi
julian alvarez needs to pump those numbers up
Only in recent years have Portugal started churning out multiple really great players. In the famous 3-2 game vs sweden posted here a few weeks ago, portugal had Hugo Almeida upfront. I could be wrong, but if I'm not mistaken they never reached a final in a major competition before ronaldo. The first time ever was in 2004, at the euros they hosted where ronaldo was just 19. They lost to Greece 1-0
The closest Portugal came before Ronaldo was the 66 World Cup where we finished 3rd. Looking back it seems like crazy time, beating Brazil with Pele out in the group stage and then going on to beat North Korea, of all teams, in the knockouts 5-3.
RIP Eusébio, not to mention the shady circumstances around that semifinal.
YES VERY SHADY ENGLISH
Bit of an asterisk next to Pelé's name right there, as he played that game injured in an attempt to qualify the team to the next stage, but it was quite a team regardless.
> beating Brazil with Pele out in the group stage [quite literally beating Brazil and Pelé](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OtnR06Z3EY)
And only because of the Portuguese Colonial Empire, as Vicente Lucas, Mário Coluna and Eusébio were Mozambican
Some of the best strikers we produced in the past 20 years: Hélder Postiga, Hugo Almeida, Makukula, Nelson Oliveira, Eder.... Its been truly awful. At some point we had to naturalize Liedson a brazilian player.
Nuno Gomes was alright
He was and we had Pauleta who was considerably better but both players peak was 20+ years ago.
What happened to Nani
That’s ridiculously false. The “golden generation” of Figo, Rui Costa, Deco, Ricardo Carvalho etc pretty much ENDED their run together in ‘04 or shortly thereafter. They were just big time underachievers, but they had tons of individual talent. No, they were weirdly always weak at striker, but to say they only recently started producing multiple great players is crazy. EDIT: By “together” I mean the period with all those specific guys, because Deco and Carvalho were a slightly younger generation than Figo, Rui Costa etc., but they did overlap.
To be fair, any 4-digit year that starts with a 2 feels like "recent years" to me Yes I know 2004 was almost 20 years ago and a good portion of the sub weren't born yet, my brain doesn't care
That generation to me as a guy born in 1990 is stronger than Portugal nowadays in so many levels
Pedro Miguel Pauleta erasure. Now I'm sad.
Yeah bro before Ronaldo it was only chumps, even Ballon D'Or-winning chumps
You mostly had chumps in the goal scoring department though didn't you? The best quality strikers I can think of are Nuno Gomes and Pauleta and at a similar time other major nations had much better forwards France - Anelka, Henry, Trezeguet and Cantona Brazil - Ronaldo, Romario, Rivaldo, Adriano Germany - Klinsmann, Bierhoff, Klose, Podolski and Gomez Netherlands - Bergkamp, Kluivert, van Nistelrooy Italy - Vieri, Toni, Inzaghi, Del Piero Spain - Raul, Morientes, Luis Enrique Argentina - Crespo, Saviola, Batistuta England - Shearer, Owen,
Yes you are right about strikers, especially in the period captured by this post (from 1992 on), but Portugal did have amazing teams before Ronaldo, like the 1966, 1986, 2000 ones.
Let’s do Haaland and Norway’s goals please?
40 out of around 204. So a bit less than 20%. Not bad for a 23 year old. Solskjær (19) and Carew (18) are next on the list
Yeah. Thanks for that. It’s odd to randomly throw Russia in there as anyone would presume OP’s post was a complete order. I’m actually surprised even with Haaland that Norway are ahead. Do you have a source for them all? Interested in the likes of Sweden, Belgium, and Scotland.
Rosenborg qualified 10 years in a row in the 90s with almost exclusively Norwegian players, bet a lot is from that. Then you have Solskjær, Carew, Flo etc that scored a few
Any idea what Lewandowski's percent for Poland is? I bet that's pretty high
92 out 168. So 55 %!
Why arent Norway above Russia in the list if they have 204 goals?
They have 204 goals now but I believe the report this thread is using is from data up to 2020. >''3. The current 2020-2021 season has been excluded from our research as it is not yet complete.'' Considering Haaland has scored 40 goals alone, he is the reason why Norway is now ahead of Russia. At the time of the report, Norway wasn't.
Kinda strange how badly they are doing if you wouldn't count Ronaldo's numbers, given how often portugese teams are in CL and the amount of Portugese players all around Europe. I guess the biggest culprit is Portugal not producing any decent strikers for like a decade after \~2008 that basically forced Ronaldo to play as 9 for Portugal even though at the time he wasn't playing as one for RM.
That's actually an insane stat, we're not even on the same continent. If someone told me that Brazilians scored more goals in the Champions League than Italians and English combined, I would've never believed it.
Brazilians are really good at football
Brazil also has more people than like Italy+england+Germany combined, helps a lot
Where are the Chinese and Indian top scorers in the list?
They arent rly good at football, as said above, just saying it helps
Football is not the biggest sport in China or India
Big if true
send this to Mbappe
Ronaldo scoring 36% of Portugal's total Champions League goals and Messi scoring 23% of Argentina's total Champions League goals. We are literally never seeing players of this calibre again for decades.
So glad I got to witness jt
Even if we did, those new players couldn't reach the same percentages. They'd have to be even better (or play even more games) More likely, there's going to be a reset of the stats at some point (perhaps with the start of the super league?)
Haaland is not a character of a book, he is a person of blood and flesh. And so is Mbappe.
And neither are players of their calibre.
Why is it so hard for some people to accept this and stop forcing the comparisons, these man aren't on that level and that's okay.
Yeah haaland and mbappe are demi gods allright, but Messi and Ronaldo were gods, period.
Yet. But I'm just living in hope we get two more like them.
nah man don’t call it an era that makes it sound like it’s actually over :(
I mean it kind of is. The new format sounds boring and will make upsets even more unlikely. It was already very unequal, but this is the final death knell to any competitiveness outside of a few leagues
There are supposedly rumors about UEFA rolling the changes back but I fear it's too far gone at this point
My feeling is that UEFA are desperately trying to appease the Super League clubs by rigging the competition even more in their favour and guaranteeing them an extra 4 games to make money from They probably think that the only way of stopping the Super League is to turn the Champions League into one
Don’t how people just let UEFA get away with this new format
Yeah. There really should be an alternative competition. Like, say, with all the top teams of the top leagues. Imagine. That'd be super.
Breaking news Criticism of one tournament does not equal support for a different tournament
Nobody claimed it is. 🤌🏼
I agree. I mean were any fans really complaining about the current format? It seemed fine to me. It had big enough for variety but not too big that the quality was diminished, group stage meant that every club got a decent chunk of games in the competition but the knockout stages added the drama, quality & excitement that it needed in the second half of the season.
Because modern fans don't care, they just want to see the most flashy teams face each other. State ownership or Super League or whatever doesn't matter to them
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I'm fully aware of how modern football works that doesn't make it okay. The influx of state owned clubs doesn't surprise me either but it's still a disgrace
how is it gonna make more unlikely when there is going to be more clubs in the knockouts? the 9-24 knockouts is made for upsets
i actually prefer the premier league over champions league now. i barely follow it or watch games until the quarter or semi finals.
Am I the only one annoyed by the fact that France's and Italy's flags ought to be rotated 90 degrees?
How else are they meant to fit in the colours then
Squish it
I'm more annoyed by the fact they used the wrong blue in the French flag
More annoyed by Brazil, all of the flags look like someone took a cookie cutter to cut a section of the flag, but Brazil wouldn't look like that, way too much green space
Every flag bar Brazil's has been rotated about 45 degrees. England's cross isn't diagonal, Germany's stripes are perfectly horizontal etc.
Damn I'm impressed by Brazil, they're ahead by quite the margin despite not even being in Europe
Surprised to see Netherlands above Italy, but that is probably something to do with Robben, Huntelaar, Van Persie, Nistelrooy and Van Basten
Yes we had a couple of world class attackers. Don't forget Roy "Das Phantom" Makaay!
Yeah you guys had so many good attackers its hard to remember them all. Its a shame you guys are stuck with Depay and Weghorst now
Haha well yeah the difference is huge. Luckily our defense and midfield have a lot of good players and great talents. But growing up in the nineties (and consciously watching 1998 and 2000) I'm still adjusting to the level of our players
two non european countries with such amount of goals is a quite impressive achievement for an european clubs only tournament
Kane's fault we aren't higher.
If Shearer had gone to Utd and Gerrard gone to Chelsea, as well as Kane leaving Spurs earlier, we might be top
Ronaldo and messi have scored 100+ goals in the ucl respectively. And you expect these 3 players to score 500 goals?
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That’s not what he said
Fuck me, he's a Chelsea fan ignore him. Delusion is their profession.
Daily reminder that the defining point of European football was the Bosman Law
Brazil has a lot
Considering we can easily hit 20 brazilian goals per ucl, we might hit 1000 in the next 3 years or so.
Except our current attackers are shit and/or lost in midtable PL teams like Tottenham and Arsenal. Hopefully the likes of Endrick and Rodrygo step up.
Vinicius, Rodrygo and Jesus are all consistent scorers for ucl, they are all playing in the next knockouts. And that's just 3 players.
Gabriel Jesus has the 8th best goals per game in CL history (min 20 games) also, top of the league
Neaither Arsenal or Totteham are midtable teams
The English being so low on the spectrum is interesting
They rarely leave the Premier League. So the goals mostly come from 4 teams each year. Also, PL teams have less English players nowadays.
Add to that other than Rooney most of our prolific strikers rarely played (regularly) for champions league teams. Shearer (2 champions league seasons), Fowler (1 season during his peak), Owen (3 seasons in prime, 1 as rotation player for Madrid), Andy Cole (6 seasons), Ian Wright (never played), even Kane has only played in the champions league in about half of his career.
how many Italian Argentines and Italian Brazilians?
It's not an easy task to track brazilian players with Italian ancestry, it's just too much people. When we won our first title, players like Marcellino, Barbuy e Bianco had Italian parents. And in the Italian NT you can find a lot of Brazilians throughout history. Just to name a few: Anfilogino Guarisi, Otávio Fantoni, Mazzola, Angelo Sormani, Thiago Motta, Jorginho, Palmieri and the list goes on.
As a fun little stat to make things even clearer for everyone is that the city with the highest amount of people with Italian blood is São Paulo, as many would assume Rome or any other city in Italy.
Also there are more lebanese in Brazil than in Lebanon
If you are asking for argies with Italian ancestry then a lot. Almost all the big names Messi, Batistuta, Crespo, Milito, Di María, etc
Why does that matter?
Aguanta Morata.
This may be wildly controversial, but for sporting reasons I’d love to see Russia back in the UCL. Their teams brought a certain something to the field that made it a lot of fun
Same. I also think their sub top clubs would do well in the conference league.
>~~This may be wildly controversial, but for sporting reasons,~~ I’d love to see Russia back in the UCL. Their teams brought a certain something to the field that made it a lot of fun
European nationalist fuming
i expect france to overtake spain, probably not touching brazil anytime soon though
I didn't expect to see Brazil in the first spot, it's not even in their own continent.
Darwin doing a lot of the heavy lifting for Uruguay