The No. 9 shirt has long signified a specific kind of forward: a penalty-area predator, a finisher whose instincts define matches. This survey collects the career highlights and records that mark the greatest exponents of that role.<\/p>\n
Silvio Piola remains Serie A\u2019s all-time top scorer with 274 goals, accumulated across Pro Vercelli, Lazio and Novara. He scored twice in the 1938 World Cup final as Italy beat Hungary 4\u20132 and is commemorated by two stadiums that bear his name.<\/p>\n
Samuel Eto\u2019o achieved an unusual club-level double of back-to-back European trebles, winning La Liga, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League with Barcelona in 2008\u201309, then Serie A, the Coppa Italia and the Champions League with Inter the following season. He is the all-time leading scorer in Africa Cup of Nations history and won that tournament twice with Cameroon, finishing his career on 421 goals.<\/p>\n
Erling Haaland burst onto the scene with RB Salzburg and later impressed at Borussia Dortmund and Manchester City, surpassing 350 goals for club and country and setting the Premier League single-season record with 36 goals in 2022\u201323. He is also the fastest and youngest player to reach 40 Champions League goals.<\/p>\n
Harry Kane became Tottenham Hotspur\u2019s all-time leading scorer before moving to Bayern Munich in 2023 and scored over 40 goals in each of his first three seasons in Germany, including a 61-goal campaign in 2025\u201326.<\/p>\n
Alan Shearer remains the Premier League\u2019s top scorer on 260 goals.<\/p>\n
Jean-Pierre Papin netted 184 goals for Marseille and helped them to four straight French titles. Uwe Seeler scored 496 career goals and was the first player to score in four separate World Cups.<\/p>\n
Zlatan Ibrahimovi\u0107 amassed 573 club goals with a repertoire ranging from acrobatics to long-range thunderbolts. Gabriel Batistuta, nicknamed “Batigol”, logged 56 goals in 78 appearances for Argentina and scored most of his 299 club goals with Fiorentina.<\/p>\n
Karim Benzema scored 354 goals for Real Madrid between 2009 and 2023 and won a Ballon d\u2019Or in 2022. Robert Lewandowski has over 740 goals and recorded 375 in 344 appearances for Bayern. Hugo S\u00e1nchez scored 208 goals in 282 matches for Real Madrid. Paolo Rossi\u2019s 1982 World Cup haul of six goals defined his career. George Weah won the Ballon d\u2019Or in 1995 and starred for Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan. Gunnar Nordahl finished with 500 career goals and five Capocannoniere titles. Luis Su\u00e1rez has scored more than 600 career goals. Marco van Basten reached 307 goals and won three Ballon d\u2019Or awards. Gerd M\u00fcller netted 565 goals for Bayern and 68 for West Germany, earning the nickname “Der Bomber.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Profiles of the game’s greatest No. 9s: records, signature goals and defining career highlights. 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1330,1017,1062,1523,1031,987],"tags":[1211,1495,1064],"class_list":["post-14142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ac-milan","category-barcelona","category-bayern-munich","category-borussia-dortmund","category-paris-saint-germain","category-real-madrid","tag-africa-cup-of-nations","tag-alan-shearer","tag-ballon-dor-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}