MEN'S WORLD HIGHEST SCORING DEFENDER IN THIRD DECADE
Picture : Besnik Krasniqi leads the ranking !
Highest Scoring Defender in 3rd Decade XXI Century after 2 years: Besnik Krasniqi
We publish for the first time the ranking for highest scoring defenders in the world football in the 3rd decade of XXI century (2021-2030) after its first two years (2021 and 2022).
Two players, both right-backs, are well ahead of the rest. One of them is James Tavernier, about whom we have been writing regularly over the last year because he has set several records.
But Tavernier is only second in the ranking of the decade (28 goals). Above him we see Besnik Krasniqi who plays in the Kosovo League. He scored 30 goals, evenly dividing them over two years. Krasniqi, unlike Tavernier, scored all his goals in home games (28 in the league, 1 in the cup and 1 in the super cup, for two clubs, Prishtina and Drita).
In the table, next to the total number goals for a player, it’s indicates how many of them he has scored from the penalty spot. As you can see, both leaders of the ranking replenished their tallies mainly due to penalties.
If you take only goals from the open game, then the leaders are different: Kendall Waston from Costa Rica (a participant of the recent World Cup) and George Horan, an Englishman who plays in the Welsh league. Each of them has 17 goals, and none from the spot.
| HIGHEST SCORING | DEFENDERS | ||||||||||
| IN 3rd DECADE OF | XXI | CENTURY (2021-2030) | |||||||||
| Player | Role | Country | Goals | Total1 | Pen. | 2021 | 2022 | ||||
| NL | NC | ICC | NT | ||||||||
| 1 | Besnik Krasniqi | RB | Kosovo | 28 | 2 | 30 | 24 | 15 | 15 | ||
| 2 | James Tavernier | RB | England | 16 | 3 | 9 | 28 | 18 | 6 | 22 | |
| 3 | David Hancko | CB | Slovakia | 13 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 20 | 8 | 12 | 8 |
| 4 | Aleix Cisteró | LB | Spain | 17 | 2 | 1 | 20 | 10 | 6 | 14 | |
| 5 | Ramy Bensebaini | LB | Algeria | 13 | 3 | 2 | 18 | 5 | 9 | 9 | |
| 6 | Denys Dedechko | CB | Ukraine | 12 | 6 | 18 | 7 | 1 | 17 | ||
| 7 | Kendall Waston | CB | Costa Rica | 13 | 2 | 2 | 17 | 9 | 8 | ||
| 8 | Ali Maâloul | LB | Tunisia | 14 | 2 | 1 | 17 | 12 | 11 | 6 | |
| 9 | George Horan | CB | England | 12 | 3 | 2 | 17 | 11 | 6 | ||
| 10 | Carlos Ramírez | CB | Colombia | 15 | 2 | 17 | 11 | 4 | 13 | ||
| 11 | Gustavo Gómez | CB | Paraguay | 11 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 16 | 2 | 5 | 11 |
| 12 | Benjamin Mata | CB | Cook Islands | 16 | 16 | 10 | 9 | 7 | |||
| 13 | Luan Cândido | LB | Brazil | 15 | 1 | 16 | 2 | 3 | 13 | ||
| 14 | Kevin Van Den Kerkhof | RB | France | 14 | 2 | 16 | 10 | 13 | 3 | ||
| 15 | Slobodan Urošević | LB | Serbia | 11 | 1 | 3 | 15 | 5 | 10 | ||
| 16 | Andrés Cadavid | CB | Colombia | 14 | 1 | 15 | 10 | 2 | 13 |
All goals at top senior level are counted (top national divisions, national cups, official international tournaments, official games between national teams).
Brazilian state championships Paulista and Carioca have status equal to national leagues (according to IFFHS decision).
Abbreviatures:
NL – National League
NC – National Cups
ICC – International Club Competitions
NT – National Team
Period: from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022.
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).