Champions League Golden Boot Power Rankings (2024/25)

Scoring goals is the hardest thing in football, and there is no harder club competition than the UEFA Champions League. The select players who have consistently found the net at this lofty level are some of the best footballers to ever step onto a pitch.

For the second season on the spin, neither Cristiano Ronaldo nor Lionel Messi will compete in this year’s Champions League. Without the two most prolific players in the competition’s illustrious history, the race for the top scorer’s prize is as open as it has ever been.

Some familiar names are naturally expected to dominate the scoring charts, but the list of Champions League Golden Boot winners in the days before the Messi-Ronaldo duopoly were peppered by some surprise victors. While the chances of goalscoring acclaim for a defender or a New Zealand international may not be so forthcoming this time around, there are plenty of viable candidates for the most challenging Golden Boot to win.

Ranking Factors

• Goalscoring record
• Fixture difficulty
• Team quality

10 Serhou Guirassy

Borussia Dortmund

A somewhat forgotten figure from the 2023/24 campaign, Guirassy scored more league goals than all but one player on the continent last term. Lured away from Stuttgart to beaten finalists, Borussia Dortmund, over the summer, Guirassy has the chance to go up against the best Europe has to offer. Or rather, the worst of the best.

Borussia Dortmund have admittedly been drawn against the La Liga giants of Barcelona and Real Madrid, but boast one of the easiest league-phase fixture lists in this season’s competition. Aside from the Clasico duo, BVB’s hardest opponent is likely to be a Bologna side who lost their top scorer, best defender and manager during the off-season.

9 Lautaro Martinez

Inter Milan

The reigning Capocannoniere in Serie A has had no issues scoring domestically since leaving Argentina. Lautaro Martinez is one of only three players to have scored at least 20 league goals in one of Europe’s top five leagues in each of the past three campaigns – the other two are Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe. Not bad company to keep.

Unlike that elite duo, Martinez has struggled to dominate on the continental stage. The Inter Milan forward was guilty of missing several glaring chances as his side crashed out of the last 16 against Atletico Madrid last term. But at the sharp tip of a team playing such a dizzying and devastating style, those opportunities will keep on coming. Whether Martinez can put them away is another question.

8 Antoine Griezmann

Atletico Madrid

Only three clubs in world football spent more than Atletico Madrid in the summer transfer window – and £91m of that gargantuan haul was splashed on strikers. But no arrival for any fee could surpass Antoine Griezmann’s importance to the club.

Atletico’s all-time top scorer has started yet another campaign in superb form. Just as adept alongside Alexander Sorloth as he is Julian Alvarez – the club’s costliest new arrival – Griezmann could very well unpick the backlines of Europe’s elite just as he did last term. The 2018 World Cup winner racked up six Champions League goals in 2023/24, a tally only surpassed by two players.

7 Vinicius Junior

Real Madrid

Vinicius Junior’s swashbuckling dribbling and an endless bag of tricks have brought comparisons to the likes of Neymar, Ronaldinho and Jay-Jay Okocha. But Carlo Ancelotti drew an unexpected link to one of the most efficient – if not entirely elegant – players ever to appear in the Champions League. “He has the intelligence to put himself where he is best in attack,” Madrid’s coach explained after shifting Vinicius infield last season. “The example is Filippo Inzaghi. He doesn’t have the same characteristics, but he’s an example.”

The former Juventus and AC Milan forward was the all-time top scorer in UEFA competition before the age of Messi and Ronaldo, pilfering a bevvy of poacher’s goals off every part of his body. Vinicius already trumps Inzaghi in terms of style, but it remains to be seen if he can match his strike rate.

6 Mohamed Salah

Liverpool

How fickle the fates of football can be. Mohamed Salah was a busted flush as recently as May 2024, hampered by injury and the exertions of a mid-season AFCON campaign. The Egypt international ended the season with seven goals in 17 games across all competitions and Liverpool were urged to cash in on the ageing forward while interest from Saudi Arabia was still there.

Rejuvenated by a summer devoid of any international commitments, Salah has started Arne Slot’s embryonic tenure in red-hot form. In what could be his final season at Anfield as his contract expires next June, Liverpool’s perennial top scorer will no doubt be eyeing up one of the few individual accolades he is yet to win; a Champions League Golden Boot.

5 Viktor Gyokeres

Sporting CP

No player from outside one of Europe’s top five leagues has finished as the Champions League’s leading scorer since Porto’s Mario Jardel in 2000. Much like the former Brazil international, Viktor Gyokeres has built up a fearsome reputation with a staggering goal return in Portugal’s top flight.

Since finishing on the losing side of the 2022/23 Championship play-off final for Coventry City against Luton Town, the Swedish striker has mercilessly plundered every team put before him. Gyokeres racked up 43 goals in his first 50 appearances for Sporting CP – not to mention the 15 which he created for his teammates. That prolific burst has been carried across to the current campaign as he embarks upon the first Champions League season of his burgeoning career.

4 Kylian Mbappe

Real Madrid

Kylian Mbappe opened his scoring account 68 minutes into his Real Madrid career but still admitted: “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.” After one of the longest transfer sagas in modern football’s history, the prodigious World Cup winner finally arrived in Spain’s capital on a free transfer this summer.

Shunted into a crowded frontline and given freedom to feel his way through the opening months of the season, Mbappe’s start at Real has been defined by moments rather than monuments. In a worrying turn of events for everyone else in Europe, the Frenchman warned: “I’m getting better every game. Every game I understand better what the team, my teammates and the coach need.”

3 Robert Lewandowski

Barcelona

At the start of the 2023/24 campaign, Robert Lewandowski admitted: “Before coming to Barcelona, I was a bit of a goal machine… here I’ve become a bit more ‘human’.” The arrival of Hansi Flick and a return to the more direct style which inspired the best form of his prolific career has restored Lewandowski’s robotic reputation.

Under Flick’s blue-eyed gaze during the 2020/21 campaign, Lewandowski broke Gerd Muller’s record of 40 Bundesliga goals in a single season for Bayern Munich, which had stood for almost half a century. One year earlier, the Pole claimed the Champions League Golden Boot with 15 goals as Flick’s Bayern completed the European treble. A repeat of either feat would be welcomed in Catalonia.

2 Harry Kane

Bayern Munich

Last season’s Champions League Golden Boot winner will no doubt be targeting a second consecutive scoring title this term. The last player to defend this particular record was a certain Cristiano Ronaldo, who won the award three times between 2016 and 2018. Kane is one of many footballers to have admitted that the prolific Portuguese forward “inspires” them.

Surrounded by a raft of fleet-footed forwards – including the likes of Jamal Musiala, Serge Gnabry and summer arrival Michael Olise – Kane has the supporting cast to help him thrive. Even when he was the undisputed figurehead of a less star-studded Tottenham Hotspur side, the England skipper racked up an impressive haul of 21 goals in 32 Champions League appearances.

1 Erling Haaland

Manchester City

Erling Haaland is woken up each morning by the sound of the Champions League’s iconic anthem. Few competitions have been spared Haaland’s scoring wrath, but Europe’s elite has brought the best out of the insatiable striker, who has a continental alarm tone. The former RB Salzburg forward plundered a first-half hat-trick against Genk on his Champions League debut in September 2019 and has scarcely slowed down since.

The unrelenting Norwegian started the 2024/25 campaign in mind-boggling form even by his own lofty standards, adding to his swollen pile of career hat-tricks. Such is Haaland’s ruthless edge, Pep Guardiola could joke that he was “so grumpy” with his talisman after he failed to finish off a third consecutive treble in September.

Stats via Transfermarkt. Correct as of 16-09-24.