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The Greatest Goalscorers in La Liga History

La Liga has produced some of the most prolific goalscorers in football history.

La Liga

La Liga has produced some of the most prolific goalscorers in football history. The Spanish top flight's combination of technical football, warm weather and world-class clubs has made it a paradise for forwards, and the numbers reflect this.

Lionel Messi's 474 La Liga goals are in a category of their own. Playing for Barcelona from 2004 to 2021, Messi won the Pichichi award — given to La Liga's top scorer each season — a record eight times. His 50-goal La Liga season in 2011/12 is a record that has never been approached.

Cristiano Ronaldo scored 311 La Liga goals in just nine seasons with Real Madrid, an extraordinary rate of nearly 35 goals per season. His rivalry with Messi defined an era of Spanish football and produced two of the greatest individual scoring records in the history of any league.

Karim Benzema's contribution is often overlooked in the context of the Messi-Ronaldo era, but his 238 La Liga goals for Real Madrid represent one of the great sustained scoring records in the competition's history. After Ronaldo's departure, Benzema became the undisputed leader of Madrid's attack and proved himself one of the world's best.

Raúl, with 229 goals almost entirely for Real Madrid, was La Liga's benchmark scorer before the modern era. The Spaniard was the European game's most prolific player through the late 1990s and early 2000s, winning three Champions Leagues along the way.

Further back, Hugo Sánchez's 234 goals for Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid in the 1980s and early 1990s made him one of the most celebrated strikers in the competition's long history.

The Pichichi race continues to produce stars. In recent seasons, Robert Lewandowski, Jude Bellingham and Kylian Mbappé have all added their names to La Liga's scoring records.

Think you know La Liga's top scorers? Challenge yourself with our La Liga quizzes on Scoric.

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