Most international goals in football: the all-time list and where Sunil Chhetri ranks

Cristiano Ronaldo is the leading goal-scorer in men’s international football with 146 goals for Portugal. Lionel Messi is second on 125, and India’s Sunil Chhetri finished his career fourth on the all-time list with 95.

All figures below are current to August 2026 and include the 2026 World Cup.

Most international goals in football: the all-time top 10

No.	Player	Country	Caps	Goals	Goals per game
1.	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal	233	146	0.63
2.	Lionel Messi	Argentina	207	125	0.60
3.	Ali Daei	Iran	148	108	0.73
4.	Sunil Chhetri	India	157	95	0.61
5.	Romelu Lukaku	Belgium	132	93	0.70
6.	Mokhtar Dahari	Malaysia	142	89	0.63
7.	Robert Lewandowski	Poland	167	89	0.53
8.	Ali Mabkhout	United Arab Emirates	115	85	0.74
9.	Harry Kane	England	121	85	0.70
10.	Ferenc Puskas	Hungary	89	84	0.94

Two pairs are level on goals, and in both cases the player who needed fewer matches is placed higher: Mokhtar Dahari ahead of Robert Lewandowski on 89, and Ali Mabkhout ahead of Harry Kane on 85. Every figure in the last column is simply goals divided by caps, so the whole table can be checked without leaving the page.

It is worth reading that last column down, because it does not follow the ranking at all. Ferenc Puskas is tenth on the list and has the best rate on it by a distance — 84 goals in only 89 matches for Hungary, against a next-best rate of 0.74. Ronaldo’s 146, by contrast, is built on longevity as much as anything: his 233 caps are a men’s world record in their own right, and the next-highest total on this list is Messi’s 207.

What has changed on this list recently

Only one name has entered the top 10 in the last two years. Harry Kane’s goals at the 2026 World Cup — he equalled Gary Lineker’s England record for World Cup goals in the opening win over Croatia — carried him past Puskas into ninth. Zambia’s Godfrey Chitalu, on 79, has dropped out of the top 10 altogether; Neymar, on 80, is now the closest name below the cut.

Everything else that has changed is at the top. Ronaldo has gone from 130 goals to 146 and Messi from 106 to 125 — Messi scored eight times at the 2026 World Cup, two behind Kylian Mbappe’s 10, which is what settled the Golden Boot in France’s favour. Sunil Chhetri added one goal and then retired for a second time.

The full head-to-head between the top two, competition by competition, is on our Ronaldo vs Messi stats page, and Ronaldo’s club and country totals are broken down on our Cristiano Ronaldo total goals page.

The record Ronaldo broke was not quite 109

For years Ali Daei’s total was given as 109, and that is the number that was in every headline while Ronaldo chased it down. He drew level during Euro 2020, then scored twice against the Republic of Ireland on 1 September 2021 to go past it in a 2-1 win.

The current record books list Daei on 108, not 109. The difference is a single goal from a match that is no longer treated as a full senior international, and the major reference lists now carry the discrepancy as a footnote rather than resolving it. It changes nothing about who holds the record, but it is the reason you will see both numbers in print, often on the same page.

Daei’s own achievement is easy to undersell in a list sorted by total. He reached 108 in 148 matches, a rate of 0.73 a game, which is better than anyone above him.

Sunil Chhetri: India’s record, and where it finished

Sunil Chhetri ended his international career with 95 goals in 157 appearances for India, fourth on the all-time list, and one of the two Asian players in the top four along with Ali Daei.

He made his senior debut against Pakistan in June 2005 and scored, salvaging a 1-1 draw. Nineteen years later he announced his retirement and played what everyone assumed was his last match, a goalless draw with Kuwait at Salt Lake Stadium in June 2024, finishing on 94.

It did not stay finished. In March 2025, at 40, he came out of retirement at the request of India head coach Manolo Marquez for the 2027 AFC Asian Cup qualifying campaign, and scored on his comeback in a 3-0 friendly win over the Maldives. That was his 95th and, as it turned out, his last. He played six more internationals and scored once; India lost 2-1 to Singapore in Goa on 14 October 2025 and missed out on the tournament, and he confirmed the end of his India career the following month.

The arithmetic is tidy enough to check: 151 caps and 94 goals at the first retirement, plus six appearances and one goal after the comeback, gives the 157 and 95 on the list above.

His peak moment in the global rankings came in June 2021, when a run of goals in the World Cup qualifiers took him above Lionel Messi on the list of active international scorers — three months before Messi went the other way and passed Pele’s South American record.

Three women have scored more than any man

Every list above is the men’s game. Put the women’s record next to it and the numbers are not close.

Player	Country	Caps	Goals
Christine Sinclair	Canada	331	190
Abby Wambach	United States	255	184
Mia Hamm	United States	276	158

Christine Sinclair’s 190 goals for Canada is the all-time record in international football, men’s or women’s, and three women in total have scored more than Ronaldo’s 146. The gap comes down to opportunity as much as anything: Sinclair played 331 internationals across 23 years, nearly a hundred more than the men’s cap record.

Who has scored the most goals in international football?

Cristiano Ronaldo, with 146 goals for Portugal in 233 appearances. He holds both the men’s scoring record and the men’s appearance record, and has led the scoring list since September 2021.

Who is India’s highest international goal-scorer?

Sunil Chhetri, with 95 goals in 157 matches for India between 2005 and 2025. No other Indian player is close, and his total puts him fourth in the world.

Has any player scored more international goals than Ronaldo?

Not in the men’s game. In the women’s game three players have — Christine Sinclair (190), Abby Wambach (184) and Mia Hamm (158).

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Featured photo: AFP / BERNADETT SZABO