The 10 highest-scoring players in the Champions League since 2017

The Champions League season is about to kick off and some of the finest strikers on the planet will feature. But who has scored the most goals in Europe's elite competition over the last five seasons?

The Champions League is the one that all players want to win and it's where the greats of the game build their legend. 

Some outstanding goalscorers have featured and it seems the limit on the number of goals it's possible to score has gone up and up in recent years. 

With the 2022-23 campaign getting underway, we've had a look at which players have been the most prolific since the start of the 2017-18 edition of the Champions League.

10. Roberto Firmino

Probably the most surprising name on the list and certainly not an out-and-out goalscorer. But Liverpool's toothy Brazilian attacker has 20 goals in 49 Champions League appearances over the last five seasons.

If Liverpool get to the latter stages again this year, it's likely Darwin Nunez will start ahead of him, but Firmino could still add to his Champions League tally if he gets a few runouts in the group stages 

9. Neymar

Another Brazilian creative forward, another man with 20 Champions League goals since September 2017.

Neymar and his Paris Saint-Germain teammates have certainly not achieved what they would have wanted in the Champions League in the past five seasons - we imagine their owners envisioned being multiple European champions by now - but his individual record is still outstanding.

The fact his 20 goals have come in 35 appearances puts him just ahead of compatriot Firmino.

8. Erling Haaland

Every other player in this top 10 has played in all five seasons of the Champions League since 2017. Erling Haaland has played in three. He has 23 goals in 19 appearances in Europe's glitziest competition. That is absolutely terrifying. 

Watch out for Manchester City in this year's competition.

7. Sadio Mane

Mane, like Firmino, has played in all five seasons of the Champions League since 2017, reaching three finals with Jurgen Klopp's swashbuckling Reds. It's little surprise to see him break the top 10 with 24 goals in 55 appearances then.

Liverpool will have to find a way to replace those goals this season, which won't be easy. Their loss is Bayern Munich's gain.

6. Kylian Mbappe

After bursting into the global footballing consciousness with his goals for Monaco in the 2016-17 Champions League, Mbappe got his big move to PSG. Though, like Neymar, he's not had the desired success on the European stage, he's still scored 27 times in the past five seasons of European football.

He's getting better, too. Mbappe's two best Champions League seasons have come in the two most recent instalments, with six goals in eight games in 2021-22 and eight goals in 10 games in 2020-21.

Under Christophe Galtier, he only seems to be getting more dangerous, so expect the dazzling young Frenchman to move up this ranking in years to come. 

5. Lionel Messi

It seems odd that a player as good as Messi has not won the Champions League since 2015, but he's continued to bang them in despite not taking the trophy.

Thirty-one goals in 41 games puts the Argentine wizard in the top five ahead of his younger PSG teammate.

4. Mohamed Salah

The last of the famous front three that led Liverpool to so much success from 2017 to 2022 was never going to miss out on this top 10, was he?

Salah was always the most lethal and goal-focused of the Reds' forward trio and that reflects in his stats of 33 goals in 56 apperances.

3. Karim Benzema

King Karim. The man who almost single-handedly dragged Real Madrid to the Champions League final in 2022, helping them to a fifth European Cup in eight seasons. The man who's surely going to win the Ballon d'Or in 2022. 

He's managed to score 35 in his 47 Champions League games since autumn 2017, 15 of which came in 12 appearances in 2021-22. Remarkable.

2. Cristiano Ronaldo

Ronaldo, in 2022-23, will not play Champions League football for the first time since 2002. Two decades. Twenty years. 

He's scored a hell of a lot of European goals in that time period - 140, to be precise. Thirty-five of those came in 43 games between 2017-18 and 2021-22.

It'll be weird watching Wednesday and Tuesday night European football without him.

1. Robert Lewandowski

Other than Haaland, Lewandowski is the only player in this top 10 to have managed more than one goal per game in the Champions League since 2017, with 46 in 45. 

He has won one European Cup in that time - the 2020 edition with Bayern Munich, when they beat PSG in the final in Lisbon - and he'll be hoping to repeat the feat with new club Barcelona this season.