Cristiano Ronaldo has scored the most penalties (19) in Champions League history, one more than Lionel Messi. Below, we look at that and other penalty records for Europe’s elite club competition.
Who has taken the most penalties in Champions League history? Who has scored the most? Who has missed the most? And who has saved the most? These are all burning questions that, until now, no one has been able to answer.
Following Opta’s project to collect additional data missing from the early seasons of the competition, we can now reveal the answers to these questions.
Note: these records do not include penalties taken in shootouts.
Who Has Taken the Most Penalties?
It won’t come as much of a surprise given their longevity and quality to see Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo featuring prominently in most of these categories.
But to answer the question, no one has stepped up to take more penalties than Messi, just one ahead of his rival.
In third for penalty takers is Robert Lewandowski, who’s probably the only player in with a realistic chance of overtaking Messi and Ronaldo at the moment. The Barcelona striker has taken 17, so he’ll probably need another couple of seasons at least in the Champions League to reach 23.
Special mention goes to Timo Werner. The German, now at Tottenham, has taken the most penalties in Champions League history without ever missing one. He may not have shown his best form in England, but the former RB Leipzig attacker has a perfect conversion rate from the spot in the Champions League, netting six out of six to date.
Who Has Scored the Most Penalties?
Positions are reversed when it comes to the player who has scored most often from the spot. Ronaldo converted 19 to Messi’s 18 during his Champions League career. Again, Lewandowski features highly with 16 and it’s also notable that he has only missed once from the spot in the competition.
Who Has Missed the Most Penalties?
Despite being a supremely talented striker, Thierry Henry had his fair share of issues from the penalty spot. Famously, he and Robert Pires fluffed an elaborate attempt to pass from one to the other in a Premier League match, but he also had his difficulties in the Champions League. In an era when Arsenal often struggled to bring their scintillating domestic form onto the European stage, Henry failed to score five of his eight Champions League penalties, giving him a conversion rate of just 37.5%.
Messi has missed five but from a far greater number taken (23) compared to Henry. Sergio Agüero failed to convert four of his 15, more evidence that even the best finishers can come up short from the spot.
Antoine Griezmann and Ruud van Nistelrooy are the other two players to have missed four penalties in the Champions League. For the Frenchman, that means he’s converted just 50% of those he’s taken.
Another former Atlético Madrid star, Radamel Falcao, scored 15 out of 16 penalties in La Liga but gets a negative nod here for having taken the most Champions League spot-kicks of any player never to have scored one. The Colombian was unsuccessful with all three of his attempts from the spot.
Who Has Saved the Most Penalties?
Many of the game’s great goalkeepers have graced the Champions League over the years, but it’s two slightly less-fashionable stoppers topping the list for penalty saves. One of them is Andriy Pyatov, who saved five spot-kicks during his time with Shakhtar Donetsk. His record there is undoubtedly helped by the fact he faced 17 through the years.
Only Real Madrid legend Iker Casillas has faced more penalties (23) than Pyatov, though the Spaniard’s saves record was more modest, saving three.
Joe Hart is the goalkeeper level on five penalty saves with Pyatov. His record is especially impressive considering he only ever faced nine in the competition; only three keepers (minimum three faced) have saved a greater proportion (55.6%) of the spot-kicks taken against them.
Behind Pyatov and Hart we find more celebrated names such as Gianluigi Buffon and Grégory Coupet (four each). At 32 years old, Barcelona’s Marc-André ter Stegen may fancy his chances of going level with and perhaps even beyond Pyatov by the end of his career, having saved four from 12 faced.
The most penalties a goalkeeper has faced without being beaten is two; Greece legend Antonis Nikopolidis faced up to a couple for Olympiakos and saved both.
Until the 2023-24 season, Diogo Costa had been out in front in this respect as he saved each of the first three he faced in the competition.
Three goalkeepers have managed two penalty saves in the same match. Buffon was the first to achieve it for Parma against Borussia Dortmund in 1997, unusual for the fact that both spot-kicks were conceded by Fabio Cannavaro for fouls on Andreas Möller. Stéphane Chapuisat was unsuccessful with the first and Möller himself missed the second. Hans-Jörg Butt, perhaps more famous for scoring three penalties in his Champions League career (more on that later), also saved two for Bayern Munich against Bordeaux in 2009.
And finally, had a very eventful game for Anderlecht against Olympiakos in 2013 Silvio Proto. The Belgian saved two penalties in a 3-1 defeat to the Greek side, but after having made those two saves, he got himself a red card (their third dismissal of the evening) for giving away a third spot-kick in the game. Aleksandar Mitrović replaced Proto in goal for the stoppage-time penalty but couldn’t emulate his goalkeeper as Alejandro Domínguez netted Olympiakos’ third.
Who Has Won the Most Penalties?
There are some players who just seem to get fouled more often than others. Whether it’s their ability being too much for a defender to handle, or perhaps inviting a foul and making sure the referee knows there was contact — we’re not here to judge.
The list of those who have won the most penalties is obviously full of forwards, and Messi (13) sits far ahead of his nearest rivals after going past Van Nistelrooy (9), who was at the top of this ranking from 2002 until 2020.
Messi won three of his penalties against Manchester City, a record against one single opponent and only matched by Karim Adeyemi, who has won three against Sevilla across games with Borussia Dortmund and Salzburg.
Who Has Conceded the Most Penalties?
At the other end of the pitch come the players who are potentially a bit clumsy, a little over aggressive or just overzealous, resulting in them giving away penalties. Perhaps unsurprisingly, former Real Madrid enforcer Pepe — now at Porto — held the record for the most spot-kicks conceded in the history of the Champions League for a few years until 2023-24. The Portuguese centre-back went clear of several other players with his fifth concession when he fouled Raheem Sterling (the Premier League record holder for penalties won) at the Etihad Stadium against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in the 2020-21 group stage. The other four spot kicks he gave away came when turning out for Real Madrid.
He’s since been overtaken by Nicolás Otamendi, however, with the Argentinian centre-back conceding two in 2023-24 while playing for Benfica.
Our Favourite Fact
Although this is fairly well known among football fans, our favourite fact about penalties in the Champions League is that goalkeeper Hans-Jörg Butt has stepped up to score three of them, all against Juventus, but for three different teams. His first came for Hamburg in September 2000, before he also netted for Bayer Leverkusen in March 2002 and for Bayern Munich in December 2009. He actually took four penalties in total in the competition, but missed one in September 2001 against Barcelona when he put the ball wide.
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