Most Goals in a Single Football Season — All Time
About This Dataset
Most Goals in a Single Football Season — All Time
Footballers who scored the most goals across all competitions in a single season. Lionel Messi set the all-time record in the 2011–12 season with 91 goals for FC Barcelona across La Liga, Copa del Rey, Champions League, and other competitions.
Analysis
Lionel Messi heads the table on 91, ahead of Gerd Müller (85) and Cristiano Ronaldo (69) in Goals in a Season. The total is spread widely: even Lionel Messi accounts for only 22% of the 6 combined. Places 3 to 6 are close together, spanning 69 to 54 Goals in a Season. Over 2010-11–2012-13 the steepest rise belongs to Cristiano Ronaldo: +15% (60 → 69). Lionel Messi is the only entity to fall over the period, down 34.1%. First place changed hands 6 times across the period.
Source:
Wikipedia
Key Findings
🏆
Lionel Messi leads in Goals in a Season with 91.
📈
Cristiano Ronaldo grew fastest: +15% from 2010-11 to 2012-13 (60 → 69).
📉
Lionel Messi declined most: -34.1% from 2011-12 to 2012-13 (91 → 60).
📅
2012-13 recorded the highest combined total across all categories.
↔️
Gap: Lionel Messi is 1.7× larger than Eusébio.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Wikipedia
- Coverage
- 6 entities · 1965-66–2022-23 (7 years) · 8 observations
- Measure
- Goals in a Season
- Last updated
- 6 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Missing years are left empty rather than estimated — no interpolation, no carrying a previous year forward.
- Change is measured between the first and last year in which an entity actually reported a value, so a series that starts late is not penalised for the years before it existed.
- The compound annual rate is (last ÷ first)^(1 ÷ years) − 1, using those same two reported years.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.
- An entity that reported nothing in the latest year is still listed — it follows the ranked entities in the table rather than being dropped.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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