Ever since the club was first founded more than a century ago, FC Barcelona have always been blessed with a dazzling array of attacking talent – perhaps more than any other club in world football.
But who makes the top five? The identity of some of the missing players shows just how strong the competition is: Samuel Eto’o, Romario, Rivaldo, Ronaldo Nazario, Hristo Stoichkov and Neymar are among those who don’t make the cut for various reasons.
And in this case we are only looking for players whose main job was putting the ball into the net. So although they straddle the divide between forwards and attacking midfielders, the likes of Ronaldinho, Johan Cruyff and Michael Laudrup have not been considered.
There are no prizes for guessing the identity of the number one, but for many of the Camp Nou club’s other all-time greats it is necessary to go a long way back. Further, in fact, than you might think.
1. Lionel Messi (718 appearances, 627 goals)
Only one man could top this list and it’s remarkable that, even at a club like Barcelona, Lionel Messi has scored nearly twice as many goals as his nearest competitor. And he has done that, of course, despite not really being a centre forward.
In fact, maybe the greatest tribute we can pay to Messi is acknowledging the difficulty of even describing him as a player.
He’s certainly not a striker in the traditional ‘number nine’ sense, even though he has scored nearly a goal per game, but it wouldn’t feel right to call him an attacking midfielder. Despite the number on his back, he is so much more than the archetypal ‘10’. Neither is he a winger, even though he has spent much of his career – including the first five and last five years – with a nominal starting position on the right flank.
So if Messi is not a striker, not a midfielder, and not a winger, but some strange mixture of all three, what even is he? Just as with many of his belief-defying goals and passes, Messi defies easy description and, in the end, we just have to settle for loosely categorising him simply as a footballer. And a footballer like nobody who has ever come before, or will ever come again.
2. Laszlo Kubala (357 appearances, 281 goals)
When Messi retires (two words which should not be allowed to go together) it is inevitable that he will be immortalised with the construction of a statue outside the Camp Nou. For now, though, that honour is held by one man and one man only: Laszlo Kubala.
Born in Hungary, Kubala arrived in Barcelona in 1950 after making a name for himself with several clubs in his homeland, which he was relieved to escape after the imposition of Iron Curtain by the Soviet Union. He was initially forced to serve a ban after authorities ruled he had left Hungary illegally, but when his Barca debut finally arrived it proved to be worth the wait.
Kubala was a goal machine, netting 26 in 19 league games including a club record seven against Sporting Gijon.
Barca won all five possible trophies during that first season, 1951/52, and another three league titles, four Spanish cups and two Fairs Cups (the forerunner of the Europa League) followed during Kubala’s ten years with the club. But there was no triumph on the ultimate European stage, as his last game for the club resulted in a 3-2 defeat against Benfica in the 1961 European Cup final.
Nevertheless, Kubala was voted by fans as the club’s greatest ever player in 1999 and a statue was erected in his honour outside the stadium ten years later.
3. Cesar Rodriguez (456 appearances, 304 goals)
He might not have looked much like a superstar athlete, but the small, slight and prematurely balding figure of Cesar Rodriguez was the deadliest goalscorer in Spanish football during the 1940s.
Born in Leon in northern Spain, he initially joined Barca in 1939 at the age of 19, but he could only play one season before military service forced him to relocate to Granada – where he made history by scoring the local club’s first goal in La Liga.
Back in Barcelona, from 1942 onwards Rodriguez was a relentlessly consistent scorer. Tenacious, tireless, two-footed and outstanding in the air, he led La Liga with 28 goals to spearhead his team’s successful league title challenge in 1948/49 – one of five La Liga crowns and 13 titles overall that he collected before leaving the club in 1955.
Sadly, he was never able to prove his worth on the continental stage because the inauguration of the European Cup came just as he left Barcelona, so he was never able to play in the competition. His legacy at Barca was slightly sullied by a short and unsuccessful spell as manager in the mid-60s, but as an out-and-out centre forward he set the standard for others to follow.
4. Paulino Alcantara (399 appearances, 395 goals)
Of all the greats to have represented Barcelona, perhaps the hardest to accurately judge from a modern perspective is Paulino Alcantara.
He played so long ago, making his debut more than a century ago in 1912, that not only does virtually no video footage exist but also the nature of the sport and its organisation were very different. La Liga, for example, did not yet exist, with Barca largely confined to competing in regional competitions other than the Spanish Cup, which was claimed on five occasions during his 15 years with the club.
However, from a combination of the grainy existing footage, the extensive written reports of his exploits and the bare stats, it is clear that Alcantara was a special player. He was particularly blessed with a ferocious shot, with a particularly famous anecdote claiming that he once broke the net in the process of scoring for Spain against France.
Alcantara also had a special story, being born in the Philippines in 1896 before relocating to Spain – as the son of a Spanish military officer – three years later. He later became Barca’s youngest ever player and goalscorer at the age of 15 (records that still stands), and later had a colourful, to say the least, post-playing career as he became a high-ranking officer in General Franco’s army during the Spanish Civil War.
5. Luis Suarez (270 appearances, 191 goals)
Barcelona’s £65 million acquisition of Luis Suarez from Liverpool in the summer of 2014 was a controversial one, with the Uruguayan frontman in the middle of a four-month ban after biting Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini during the World Cup.
Over the last six years, though, Suarez has proven to be a wise investment by unleashing a barrage of goals whilst also showing that leopards can, sometimes, if not quite change their spots then at least tone them down – although he has remained a ferocious competitor, since moving to Spain he has never ‘crossed the line’ in the manner that blighted his early career.
The highlight came in Suarez’s first season at the Camp Nou, where his telepathic understanding with Lionel Messi and Neymar formed the most devastating forward line in history, culminating in Suarez scoring the go-ahead goal in the 2015 Champions League final victory over Juventus to secure the treble.
Those standards have not been maintained, but it has often felt that the endlessly productive partnership between Messi and Suarez has papered over the cracks of an otherwise disintegrating team, with the Uruguayan’s importance becoming even more obvious during his injury absence in the last few weeks.
But with the Coronavirus-enforced break allowing him time to recover, don’t rule out Suarez from roaring back just in time to have the final word if the current campaign ever does reach a conclusion.
