IFFHS ALL TIME RANKING FOR THE WORLD'S HIGHEST SCORING DEFENDERS

• Feb 15, 2022
• History Statistics

Picture : Ronald Koeman scored 253 goals in his career as defender at the highest level !

IFFHS All-Time Ranking for the World’s Highest Scoring Defenders

We publish for the first time the all-time ranking for highest scoring defenders in the world football. 
The record holder in this category belongs to Ronald Koeman whose 253 goals is an incredible amount for a defender. He leads the ranking with a big margin and will keep his record for many years yet.
Daniel Passarella takes the second position with 175 goals and Fernando Hierro the third with 170.
In total, 12 defenders have reached 100 goals so far, including Sergio Ramos, the only active players from this list. He is placed 4th with 128 goals, with not very realistic chances to lift up higher given a big gap from his countryman Hierro.
Two active defenders are quite close to the “Club 100+”. Keilor Soto (Costa Rica) has 91 goals (90 of them in the national league, 1 in Cup); he dreams about reaching 100 but at the age of 37 it will not be easy (also he is without club currently). 
Abderrahmane Hachoud (Algeria) has a better prospect: 93 goals at the age of 33 years.
Only the players which held essential majority of their games as defenders are taken in consideration. For this reason, several players (in particular, Paul Breitner and Franck Sauzée), despite scoring more than 100 goals, aren’t included. They have played some part of their career as defenders but still performed a midfield role in quite many games.
The column “Role” means the main position of the player (CB = centre back, RB = right back, LB = left back).  
Only top-level goals scored until 14 February 2022 are counted.
Tiebreaking criteria in case of equal number of total goals: 1) international goals (ICC + NT).

	WORLD's ALL-TIME
	HIGHEST SCORING		DEFENDERS
	Player	Role	Years	Country	Goals				Total
					NL	NC	ICC	NT
1	Ronald Koeman	CB	1980-1997	Netherlands	193	21	25	14	253
2	Daniel Passarella	CB	1974-1989	Argentina	134	13	6	22	175
3	Fernando Hierro	CB	1987-2005	Spain	110	13	18	29	170
4	Sergio Ramos	CB	2004-	Spain	75	9	21	23	128
5	Roberto Carlos	LB	1991-2015	Brazil	80	10	23	11	124
6	Laurent Blanc	CB	1987-2003	France	96	7	5	16	124
7	Edgardo Bauza	CB	1977-1992	Argentina	109		2		111
8	Manfred Kaltz	RB	1971-1991	Germany	77	15	10	8	110
9	Siniša Mihajlović	CB	1988-2006	Yugoslavia/Serbia	66	19	14	10	109
10	Bruno Pezzey	CB	1973-1990	Austria	73	14	9	9	105
11	Hans-Jürgen Dörner	CB	1969-1985	East Germany	65	24	7	9	105
12	Marcus Tulio Tanaka	CB	2001-2019	Japan	75	18	3	8	104

Abbreviatures:
NL – National League (only top tier)
NC – National Cups
ICC – International Club Competitions (only officials)
NT – National Team