Footballers who scored 50 goals in a season

The legendary Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano memorably described the act of scoring a goal as "football's orgasm".

At the turn of the millennium he also warned: "Like orgasms, goals have become an ever less frequent occurrence in modern life." However, the second decade of the 2000s has given rise to a new age of scoring savants.

Erling Haaland became the first player in almost a century to score 50 or more goals for an English top-flight team in 2023. The prodigious goal-monger is the latest of the modern-day pleasure poachers but those that have gone before him should not be forgotten.

Here is a selection of the talented individuals that have enjoyed football's most euphoric event more often than any others.

Dixie Dean

A 21-year-old Dixie Dean was spearheading Everton's frontline when he scored an outrageous 63 goals in the 1927/28 campaign, firing the Toffees to the league title while indelibly inking his name into the English record books.

With George Camsell's Football League record of 59 goals in his sights, Dean plundered a hat-trick against Arsenal on the final day of the season to cement his legendary status. Only three other individuals - Pongo Waring, Vic Watson and the aforementioned Haaland - have ever bagged more than 50 goals for an English top-flight club in one season.

Josef Bican

The statistical surges of the game's modern scorers prompted the rediscovery of the Austrian ace Josef Bican and the swift downgrading of his achievements. However, the star of the Czech top flight on either side of the Second World War was fending off era bias before his passing in 2001.

"I heard so many times that it was easier to score in my day," Bican sniffed, as quoted by UEFA. "But the chances were the same a hundred years ago and will be the same a hundred years from now. The situation is identical and everybody would agree that a chance should be a goal. If I got five chances, I scored five goals – if I got seven then it was seven."

Ferenc Deak

Caught in between two golden ages for Hungarian football, Ferenc Deak's prolific feats were lost in the fog of war. The devastating striker outscored every other player on the planet in three different seasons while the globe was recovering from the hellscape of World War II - Deak twice broke the 50-goal barrier during this spell.

Conflict robbed Deak of the chance to appear at a World Cup but he took out his frustrations on the Hungarian top flight. All of his 66 goals in the 1945/46 campaign came in the league, which remains a European season record.

Pele

In a career which spanned 1,366 matches for club and country, Pele's longest goalless streak lasted just nine games - and that drought came during his first 11 outings as a professional.

When various friendlies, unofficial matches and the climax of Escape to Victory have been factored out of the count, Pele scored at least 50 goals for Santos in six different seasons.

Gerd Muller

When asked to explain his outrageous scoring record, Gerd Muller gave the slightly haunting answer: "Something inside me says: 'Gerd, go this way. Gerd, go that.' I don't know what it is."

The little director inside Muller's head was working overtime between 1971 and 1973 as Muller twice broke the 50-goal barrier for Bayern Munich. Astonishingly, never once in his career did Muller ever make more than 50 appearances in one season.

Lionel Messi

Lionel Messi was leaning towards modesty when he protested: "I’m not a typical scorer." However, he had hit the nail on the head. Nothing about Messi's goal return is typical.

On no fewer than six separate occasions, the Argentine crashed in more than 50 club goals during a single season. Messi first broke the barrier as a prodigious 23-year-old in Pep Guardiola's legendary Barcelona vintage of 2010/11 and last racked up half a century as a grizzled vet in the decidedly less vaunted team Ernesto Valverde coaxed to caveated success eight years later.

Cristiano Ronaldo

After one particularly chastening display against Cristiano Ronaldo's Manchester United, Bolton Wanderers manager Sam Allardyce was asked if his full back Henrik Pedersen would be psychologically scarred.

"Scars?" Allardyce exclaimed. "We're going to need a f***ing plastic surgeon after that." Ronaldo left innumerable defenders in ribbons throughout his unerringly extended peak at the game's zenith, breaking the 50-goal barrier for Real Madrid in six consecutive seasons.

Luis Suarez

Love him or hate him, you can't dismiss Luis Suarez's innate ability to simply find the back of the net as he has proved in both the Premier League and Spain's top flight with his 59-goal season coming when donning Barcelona colours.

He racked up 40 goals in 35 domestic games and an extra 19 elsewhere in the 2015/16 season where Barcelona achieved a league and cup double.