Who has scored the most headed goals in Champions League history? Well, thanks to Opta’s project to collect historical data on the UCL, we’re now able answer the question.
Heading Out of Fashion
Headers are another part of the game that have been in decline since the start of the UEFA Champions League in 1992-93. The first decade of the competition saw almost one in five goals being scored by headers. In the second decade that had reduced to about one in six and it’s since dropped to around one in seven.
The highest proportion of headed goals came in 1998-99 with one in four goals being headers, while the lowest proportion was as recent as 2023-24 with 11.2% (level with 2020-21) coming that way.
Of course, the UCL’s two all-time leading scorers have both netted headers in finals, with Cristiano Ronaldo (against Chelsea for Manchester United in 2008) and Lionel Messi (for Barcelona against Manchester United in 2009) doing so in one final apiece.
But the dearth of headers is shown by the fact Kinglsey Coman’s headed goal in the 2020 showpiece was the first of its kind in a final since Real Madrid versus Atlético Madrid in 2014 when there were three in a single match. Diego Godín’s first-half goal was cancelled out by a 90th-minute Sergio Ramos equaliser and Gareth Bale got the decider 10 minutes from the end of extra-time to start the celebrations for Los Blancos.
Dani Carvajal also scored a Champions League final header in the 2024 edition, helping Madrid to a 2-0 win over Borussia Dortmund.
Heading Up the Rankings
Mário Jardel was the first player to reach five headed goals in November 1998. He was closely followed by Diego Simeone, just 49 minutes later as the Argentine scored for Inter against Spartak Moscow on 4 November 1998. They were joined on that mark by Christian Panucci the following night, who added two headed goals to his tally against Sturm Graz for Real Madrid.
However, by the end of that season they had all been overhauled by Dwight Yorke, who scored six headers in the 1998-99 season alone. That tally is the highest number of headed goals in a single season in the history of the Champions League by any player.
Jardel retook the record in March 2000 with a brace for Porto against Barcelona and was then the first to reach 10 headed goals with another double against Bayern Munich. The Brazilian extended his record with two more headed goals for Galatasaray in 2000-01, and he kept that record until Fernando Morientes broke it in November 2006 with his 13th in the competition across games for Real Madrid, Monaco and Valencia. The former Spain international also netted one in a final when he scored against Valencia in May 2000.
Cristiano Ronaldo Heads the Rankings
The record for most UCL headed goals lasted almost a decade until Cristiano Ronaldo set a new competition-high while playing for Real Madrid against Shakhtar Donetsk, scoring his 14th on 15 September 2015. The Portuguese forward has since added another 11 to his tally to set a target that may never be reached given the seemingly downward trend of scoring headers.
Karim Benzema and Robert Lewandowski are sitting joint-second in the rankings with 18 headed goals apiece, though the Polish striker will pull clear of the Frenchman if he manages to net a header this season for Barcelona.
Lewandowski scored 16 of those goals for Bayern Munich. The next active player in the rankings for headed goals in the competition is a current Bayern player, although Thomas Müller has just eight, so it’s hard to see him ever troubling Ronaldo’s haul. He is, however, helping ensure Bayern remain the team with the most headed goals in the history of the competition (111), which is basically another trophy in itself, right?
Three Heads Are Better Than One
Our final fact of note is that just two players have scored a hat-trick of headers in a Champions League match. Uwe Rösler was the first to do it for Kaiserslautern against HJK Helsinki in December 1998, and he was emulated by Walter Pandiani for Deportivo La Coruña against Paris Saint-Germain in March 2001.
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