A former Chelsea hitman, Didier Drogba, has been ranked the 4th most deadly striker in modern football.
This is according to a study by Live Football Tickets which sought to find the best goal-scorers of the 21st century and calculate the percentage of their goals that are penalties.
Only 6.29% of Drogba’s goals came from penalties.
The former Ivory Coast striker is far ahead of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo who are ranked 15th and 25th respectively on the chart.
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In a release, the body said the study was driven by the argument between fans of Ronaldo and Messi over who is a better scorer among the duo.
“Recently we’ve seen the likes of Messi, Ronaldo and Benzema all move to leagues outside the top five in Europe, leaving fans to prolong the debate of who the G.O.A.T in football is.
“With one of the key arguments being over the number of penalty goals that contribute to their goal tally,” Live Football Tickets said in a statement.
The body said the study would settle the debate of the greatest goal-scorers once and for all.
In first place is Bosnian striker, Edin Džeko, whose 328 goals at club level only consist of an impressively low 9 penalty goals (2.74%). Džeko has enjoyed a long career at a variety of top-tier teams such as Manchester City and Inter Milan.
In second place is German striker, Miroslav Klose, who boasts 258 goals at club level, only 11 of which were penalty goals (4.26%). Klose won many trophies throughout his career, most notably a World Cup, leaving most German fans regarding him amongst the greatest goal-scorers in history.
Rounding off the top three is another German striker, Mario Gómez, where only 17 (5.33%) of his 319 goals at club level came from penalties. Gomez has experienced incredible success throughout his footballing career, particularly with Bayern Munich, where he won several league titles and an elusive Champions League trophy.
Meanwhile, the man who many consider the greatest of all time, Cristiano Ronaldo, ranks last. Although the Portuguese superstar has bagged 721 goals at club level, a whopping 136 (18.86%) of these came from penalty kicks.
Lionel Messi on the other hand has also scored 721 goals at club level, but only 84 (11.65%) of them came from penalties, which for some could be key in settling the debate of who is better.
Methodology:
1- Live Football Tickets sought to find out the greatest goal scorers of the 21st century based on who had the lowest percentage of penalty kicks.
2- A seed list of 25 of the highest scoring players of the 21st century were collected using Transfermarkt, Sofascore, Premier League and Fbref.
3 – Utilising transfermarkt, the amount of goals at club level were collected for each player, as well as how many of these goals were penalty goals.
4 – The percentages of penalty goals were calculated for each player and the results were ranked from lowest to highest to determine the players with the lowest percentage of penalty goals.
