THE WORLD'S HIGHEST SCORING DEFENDER OF XXI CENTURY

• Jan 9, 2022
• History Statistics

Picture : Sergio Ramos scored already 127 goals as Defender !

The World’s Highest Scoring Defender of XXI Century: Sergio Ramos

Sergio Ramos leads the category of highest scoring defenders in the world top football in XXI Century at the beginning of 2022.
The centre-back of PSG has scored 127 goals for his clubs and Spain. However, 2021 was clearly not the best year in his career; he managed to add only 1 goal.
The second place belongs to Marcus Tulio Tanaka (Japan) who retired in 2019 with the tally of 104 top level goals (not counting the goals he scored in Japanese D2).
Only these two defenders have reached the 100-goal mark in XXI century so far. 
There are currently 55 defenders in the world who scored 50+ top level goals. They are gathered in the table and sorted by the main ranking (Total XXI).
Five of them have reached 50-goal mark in 2021: George Horan (England), David Alaba (Austria), Thiago Silva (Brazil), Francisco Calvo (Costa Rica), Murod Kholmukhamedov (Uzbekistan).
Also we put in the table other 5 players which are below 50 goals in XXI but have reached this amount adding the goals they scored in XX century. They are sorted in additional ranking (Total Career). 
These 5 defenders have still scored essential majority (not less than 65 percent) of their goals in XXI century (respectively, not more than 35 percent in XX) so they can be conditionally considered the “goal-scoring defenders of XXI century”. 
For the players who have goals in both centuries, those scored in XX are taken in brackets in the particular columns (NL, NC, ICC, NT). Among these defenders, we find Roberto Carlos who has a huge sum of 124 goals (only 3 less than Ramos) but it is divided almost equally between centuries: 63 goals in XX and 61 in XXI.
The players marked in bold are currently active; others finished the career.
All goals at top senior level are counted (top national divisions, national cups, official international club tournaments, official games between national teams).
Brazilian state championships Paulista and Carioca have status equal to national leagues (according to IFFHS decision).
Only the players which held essential majority of their games as defenders are taken in consideration. 
The column “Role” means the main position of the player (CB = centre back, RB = right back, LB = left back).

	THE WORLD's HIGHEST		SCORING DEFENDERS
	IN XXI CENTURY
	Player	Role	Country	Goals				Total	Total	Total
				NL	NC	ICC	NT	XXI	XX	Career
1	Sergio Ramos	CB	Spain	74	9	21	23	127		127
2	Marcus Tulio Tanaka	CB	Japan	75	18	3	8	104		104
3	Abderrahmane Hachoud	RB	Algeria	70	13	9		92		92
4	Keilor Soto	CB	Costa Rica	90	1			91		91
5	Markus Jürgenson	RB	Estonia	66	19			85		85
6	Ali Maâloul	LB	Tunisia	54	3	21	2	80		80
7	Darijo Srna	RB	Croatia	37	10	10	22	79		79
8	Mohamed Rabie Meftah	RB	Algeria	66	3	9		78		78
9	Joseph Chipolina	LB	Gibraltar	70	2	4	2	78		78
10	Colin Coates	CB	Northern Ireland	52	19	5		76		76
11	Roland Juhász	CB	Hungary	55	5	8	6	74		74
12	Branislav Ivanović	CB	Serbia	40	5	15	13	73		73
13	Dani Alves	RB	Brazil	39	10	16	8	73		73
14	John Terry	CB	England	42	12 (+1)	13	6	73	1	74
15	Naldo	CB	Brazil	54	6	13		73		73
16	Juninho	CB	Brazil	60	11	2		73		73
17	Espen Ruud	RB	Norway	62	4	3	1	70		70
18	John Arne Riise	LB	Norway	35 (+3)	10 (+2)	7 (+1)	15 (+1)	67	7	74
19	Aleksandar Kolarov	LB	Serbia	39	11	6	11	67		67
20	Kendall Waston	CB	Costa Rica	49		9	7	65		65
21	Matías Rodríguez	RB	Argentina	48	9	8		65		65
22	Givi Kvaratskhelia	CB	Georgia	56 (+10)	4	5		65	10	75
23	Daniel Van Buyten	CB	Belgium	40 (+7)	6	8 (+2)	10	64	9	73
24	Sergei Ignashevich	CB	Russia	39 (+2)	6	10	8	63	2	65
25	Gerard Piqué	CB	Spain	31	9	16	5	61		61
26	Diego Lugano	CB	Uruguay	42	4	6	9	61		61
27	Roberto Carlos	LB	Brazil	41 (+39)	7 (+3)	7 (+16)	6 (+5)	61	63	124
28	Luisão	CB	Brazil	33	11	13	3	60		60
29	Ramin Rezaeian	RB	Iran	52	4	2	2	60		60
30	George Horan	CB	England	50	8	2		60		60
31	Mahmoud Fathallah	CB	Egypt	51	2	4	2	59		59
32	Andrés Túñez	CB	Venezuela	38	17	4		59		59
33	Alex	CB	Brazil	42	2	14		58		58
34	James Tavernier	RB	England	42	7	8		57		57
35	Léo Moura	RB	Brazil	45	5	7		57		57
36	Maxi Pereira	RB	Uruguay	42	3	8	3	56		56
37	Johan Larsson	CB	Sweden	45	5	6		56		56
38	Daniel Majstorović	CB	Sweden	42	7	4	2	55		55
39	Christoffer Andersson	RB	Sweden	45 (+2)	6	4 (+2)		55	4	59
40	Mato Neretljak	CB	Croatia	43 (+3)	6	4 (+1)	1	54	4	58
41	Dedi Ben Dayan	LB	Israel	47 (+17)	3 (+1)	3 (+2)	1	54	20	74
42	Jan Vertonghen	CB	Belgium	32	6	6	9	53		53
43	Mikael Lustig	RB	Sweden	32	9	6	6	53		53
44	Nicolás Sánchez	CB	Argentina	40	6	7		53		53
45	Vilmos Vanczák	CB	Hungary	39	8	2	4	53		53
46	Yuji Nakazawa	CB	Japan	31 (+5)	6 (+1)		15 (+2)	52	8	60
47	Juan	CB	Brazil	24 (+4)	5 (+2)	15 (+3)	7	51	9	60
48	David Alaba	LB	Austria	25	6	6	14	51		51
49	Thiago Silva	CB	Brazil	30	8	6	7	51		51
50	Mahmoud Alaa	CB	Egypt	43	4	4		51		51
51	Diego Godín	CB	Uruguay	29	4	9	8	50		50
52	Marcelo	LB	Brazil	30	5	9	6	50		50
53	Francisco Calvo	CB	Costa Rica	41		2	7	50		50
54	Antônio Carlos	CB	Brazil	40	6	4		50		50
55	Murod Kholmukhamedov	RB	Uzbekistan	43	5	1	1	50		50
	Jersson González	RB	Colombia	38 (+19)		2	1	41	19	60
	Marek Jankulovski	LB	Czech Republic	20 (+17)	3	2	12	37	17	54
	Sami Hyypiä	CB	Finland	21 (+15)	5	8	5	39	15	54
	Lúcio	CB	Brazil	29 (+5)	5	8	4	46	5	51
	Joan Capdevila	LB	Spain	32 (+6)	1	6 (+1)	4	43	7	50

Abbreviatures:
NL – National League
NC – National Cups
ICC – International Club Competitions
NT – National Team

Period:
from January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2021 (for the ranking Total XXI);
from the career start to December 31, 2021 (for the ranking Total Career).

Tiebreaking criteria in case of equal number of total goals: 1) international goals (ICC + NT), 2) goals scored for national team (NT), 3) goals scored in domestic league (NL).

Full names of Brazilian players:
Alex = Alex Rodrigo Dias da Costa
Antônio Carlos =Antônio Carlos dos Santos Aguiar
Juan = Juan Silveira dos Santos
Juninho =Anselmo Vendrechovski Júnior
Lúcio = Lucimar Ferreira da Silva
Luisão = Ânderson Luís da Silva
Marcelo = Marcelo Vieira da Silva Júnior
Naldo = Ronaldo Aparecido Rodrigues