The Bundesliga has produced some of football’s finest goal-scorers since it was founded in 1963. With 365 goals, Gerd Müller is the league’s all-time leader in that category, but Robert Lewandowski came close during his ten-year stint in Germany. Find the list of the top 10 all-time goalscorers in the Bundesliga below.
10) Dieter Müller (177 goals)
Dieter Kaster made two short appearances for Offenbach in 1972–73, marking the start of his Bundesliga career. He joined Cologne that summer and adopted his adoptive father’s surname. He scored at least 17 goals in six of his eight seasons with the Billy Goats. He had 34 goals that season, which made him the league’s leading scorer. The next year, he won the championship. In August 1977, when Cologne defeated Bremen 7-2, he set a record by becoming the first and only player to score six goals in a single Bundesliga game. However, there is no video evidence of this historic accomplishment—only still photos—because cameramen were on strike that day and no one was filming the game for television.
9) Stefan Kuntz (179 goals)
While playing for Bochum in the 1983–84 season, Stefan Kuntz established the tone for his Bundesliga career by scoring in each of his first four league contests. In all but four of the 15 seasons he played in the top level, he eventually reached double digits. Between 1985–86 and 1993–94, when the former Germany U21 coach also won the league with Kaiserslautern sensationally, he placed first in scoring.
8) Ulf Kirsten (182 goals)
Ulf Kirsten is the only other player in the top 10 of the Bundesliga who has scored every goal for one club except Müller. He started his career with Dynamo Dresden, where he won the league twice before Germany’s reunification, and then he transferred to Bayer Leverkusen. He was born in East Germany. He won the Bundesliga’s top scorer award three times (1992/93, 1996/97, and 1997/98) and was an important contributor to the Bayer squad that earned the moniker “Eternal Bridesmaids” with four runners-up results, losses in the 2001/02 UEFA Champions League and DFB Cup finals, and four runners-up finishes.
7) Klaus Allofs (195 goals)
Klaus Allofs exploded onto the scene in 1978–1979 with 22 league goals after a solid start to life in the Bundesliga with Fortuna Düsseldorf. In addition, Düsseldorf advanced to the European Cup Winners’ Cup final, where they played Barcelona, earning him the Torjägerkanone award. A few years later, he continued to score goals for the local rivals Cologne, becoming the first player to lead two separate teams in scoring in 1982/83. He spent the final three years of his career in Bremen, when in 1992/93 he eventually won the Bundesliga Meisterschale.
6) Claudio Pizarro (197 goals)
Over the course of a more than 20-year Bundesliga career, Claudio Pizarro established himself as a genuine fan favorite. From 1999, when he was first signed by Bremen (he would later be re-signed three more times) from Alianza Lima in his native Peru, until 2019, when he finally hung up his boots at the age of 41, the Peruvian scored in the German top flight every calendar year, coming up just short of the 200-goal mark.
5) Manfred Burgsmüller (213 goals)
Perhaps the most underappreciated goal scorer in Bundesliga history is Manni Burgsmüller. He held the fourth spot on the list of all-time scorers for more than 30 years till Lewandowski passed him just a few months after he passed away at age 69. He is now Dortmund’s all-time leading scorer in the Bundesliga (135 goals), although he didn’t win the title with Werder Bremen until 1988, 19 years after making his league debut.
4) Jupp Heynckes (220 goals)
Jupp Heynckes started his career in the Bundesliga as a goal-scoring machine on the pitch. After leading Bayern to the treble in 2013, he is now regarded as one of German football’s best-ever coaches. He was a true Mönchengladbach native and played with the Foals for the entirety of his brilliant playing career, with the exception of a two-year stint at Hannover. Heynckes had a significant role in Gladbach’s heyday, winning four Bundesliga championships in the 1970s. He won the DFB Cup in 1973 and the UEFA Cup in 1975 in addition to the Torjägerkanone thrice. He also won gold medals with Germany in the FIFA World Cup (1974) and the UEFA European Championship (1972) during that decade.
3) Klaus Fischer (268 goals)
Fischer ended his 19-year career as one of just 11 players to appear more than 500 times in the Bundesliga due to his extended tenure there. He was the league’s leading scorer just once (1975–76), although he scored by far the most goals of any of the acclaimed members of that group. He scored at least 20 goals over the course of six seasons, and while he rose to fame for his overhead kicks, one of his most memorable performances was when he contributed four goals to Schalke’s historic 7-0 victory over Bayern.
2) Robert Lewandowski (312 goals)
In Lewandowski’s time in the Bundesliga, several records have fallen, including some that were unbreakable for 50 years. The non-German player from Poland already leads the Bundesliga in goals scored and is the first to win five straight top-scorer awards. He created history by breaking Der Bomber’s 49-year-old record for the most goals scored in a single league season, which stood at 40, and moving into second place on this list by surpassing Schalke icon Klaus Fisher’s 268-goal mark in Bayern’s victory against VfB Stuttgart on Matchday 26. He became just the second player in Bundesliga history to score 300 goals with a hat trick against Cologne early in 2022 and narrowly misses out on top spot on the list of the top 10 goalscorers all-time in the Bundesliga.
1) Gerd Müller (365 goals)
With Bayern, Gerd ‘Der Bomber’ Müller set record after record in the Bundesliga. Undoubtedly, his 365 goals will stand as the record for all time, but what was even more remarkable was the pace at which he managed to score for so long. The four-time Bundesliga champion scored one per 105 minutes over the span of 14 seasons, winning the coveted Torjägerkanone an unheard-of five times. Despite missing three penalties, he scored 40 goals in 1971–1972 to set the record for a single season helping him to the top of the list of the top 10 goalscorers all-time in the Bundesliga.
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