IFFHS WORLD'S HIGHEST SCORING DEFENDER OF XXIst CENTURY

• Feb 17, 2021
• IFFHS News

Picture : The World's Top 3 of the Scoring Defenders - Ramos, Tanaka, Hachoud.

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

Sergio Ramos leads the category of highest scoring defenders in the world top football in XXIst Century at the beginning of 2021.The centre back of Real Madrid has scored 126 goals for his club and country.
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 XXIst century so far. And there are 51 defenders in the world who scored 50+ goals. They are gathered in the table and sorted in main ranking (Total XXI).
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 XXth 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 XXIst century (respectively, not more than 35 percent in XX) so they can be conditionally considered as “goal-scoring defenders of XXIst century”. 

For the players who have goals in both centuries, those scored in XXth 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 2 less than Ramos) but it is divided almost equally between centuries: 63 goals in XXth and 61 in XXIst.
Three defenders are missing at the start of 2021 just 1 goal to enter “Club 50”: Thiago Silva (Brazil), Łukasz Piszczek (Poland) and Beto (Brazil), all have 49 goals.

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).

 

IFFHS RANKING OF THE WORLD'S HIGHEST SCORING DEFENDERS

	Player	Role	Country	Goals				Total	Total	Total
				NL	NC	ICC	NT	XXI	XX	Career
1	Sergio Ramos	CB	Spain	74	9	20	23	126		126
2	Marcus Tulio Tanaka	CB	Japan	75	18	3	8	104		104
3	Abderrahmane Hachoud	RB	Algeria	66	13	9		88		88
4	Keylor Soto	CB	Costa Rica	85	1			86		86
5	Markus Jürgenson	RB	Estonia	66	19			85		85
6	Darijo Srna	RB	Croatia	37	10	10	22	79		79
7	Joseph Chipolina	LB	Gibraltar	70	2	4	2	78		78
8	Roland Juhász	CB	Hungary	55	5	8	6	74		74
9	Branislav Ivanović	CB	Serbia	40	5	15	13	73		73
10	John Terry	CB	England	42	12 (+1)	13	6	73	1	74
11	Naldo	CB	Brazil	54	6	13		73		73
12	Colin Coates	CB	Northern Ireland	49	19	5		73		73
13	Juninho	CB	Brazil	60	11	2		73		73
14	Dani Alves	RB	Brazil	38	10	16	8	72		72
15	Mohamed Rabie Meftah	RB	Algeria	58	3	9		70		70
16	Ali Maâloul	LB	Tunisia	46	3	19	1	69		69
17	Espen Ruud	RB	Norway	60	4	3	1	68		68
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	Givi Kvaratskhelia	CB	Georgia	56 (+10)	4	5		65	10	75
21	Daniel Van Buyten	CB	Belgium	40 (+7)	6	8 (+2)	10	64	9	73
22	Matías Rodríguez	RB	Argentina	48	9	7		64		64
23	Sergei Ignashevich	CB	Russia	39 (+2)	6	10	8	63	2	65
24	Diego Lugano	CB	Uruguay	42	4	6	9	61		61
25	Roberto Carlos	LB	Brazil	41 (+39)	7 (+3)	7 (+16)	6 (+5)	61	63	124
26	Luisão	CB	Brazil	33	11	13	3	60		60
27	Mahmoud Fathallah	CB	Egypt	51	2	4	2	59		59
28	Gerard Piqué	CB	Spain	30	8	15	5	58		58
29	Alex	CB	Brazil	42	2	14		58		58
30	Léo Moura	RB	Brazil	45	5	7		57		57
31	Kendall Waston	CB	Costa Rica	42		7	7	56		56
32	Andrés Túñez	CB	Venezuela	36	17	3		56		56
33	Maxi Pereira	RB	Uruguay	41	3	8	3	55		55
34	Daniel Majstorović	CB	Sweden	42	7	4	2	55		55
35	Christoffer Andersson	RB	Sweden	45 (+2)	6	4 (+2)		55	4	59
36	Mato Neretljak	CB	Croatia	43 (+3)	6	4 (+1)	1	54	4	58
37	Dedi Ben Dayan	LB	Israel	47 (+17)	3 (+1)	3 (+2)	1	54	20	74
38	Jan Vertonghen	CB	Belgium	32	6	6	9	53		53
39	Mikael Lustig	RB	Sweden	32	9	6	6	53		53
40	Nicolás Sánchez	CB	Argentina	40	6	7		53		53
41	Vilmos Vanczák	CB	Hungary	39	8	2	4	53		53
42	Ramin Rezaeian	RB	Iran	47	2	2	2	53		53
43	Yuji Nakazawa	CB	Japan	31 (+5)	6 (+1)		15 (+2)	52	8	60
44	Juan	CB	Brazil	24 (+4)	5 (+2)	15 (+3)	7	51	9	60
45	James Tavernier	RB	England	37	6	8		51		51
46	Johan Larsson	CB	Sweden	42	4	5		51		51
47	Diego Godín	CB	Uruguay	29	4	9	8	50		50
48	Marcelo	LB	Brazil	30	5	9	6	50		50
49	Mahmoud Alaa	CB	Egypt	42	4	4		50		50
50	Antônio Carlos	CB	Brazil	40	6	4		50		50
51	Jalal Daoudi	CB	Morocco	46	2	2		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, 2020 (for the ranking Total XXI);
	from career start to December 31, 2020 (for the ranking Total Career).

Full names of Brazilian players:
Alex = Alex Rodrigo Dias da Costa
Antônio Carlos =Antônio Carlos dos Santos Aguiar
Beto = Roberto Fronza
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