Football is serious business and at the heart of that business is the currency of goals. While teams often rely on the expertise of defenders and midfielders, no player in the history of the sport has ever been as important as the one that can stick the ball in the back of the net. While the modern game has changed much from its humble beginnings over a century ago, the best and certainly highest-paid stars across Europe’s top five leagues are undoubtedly the goalscorers that win games for the biggest clubs in the world. And the only thing better than one reliable talisman up front is an attacking line-up of players that love to stick the ball in the back of the net. So which clubs can lay claim to the best attacking trios in European football this season?
As we can see in the graphic above, when we rank the most prolific attacking trios from the top ten leagues across all competitions, no club even comes close to Barcelona’s trio of Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha, and Lamine Yamal who lead the rankings with an impressive total of 68 goals. The Polish striker leads the way with 33 goals on his own, with Raphinha undoubtedly enjoying the best season of his career with 24 goals in LaLiga to date, while Yamal provides excellent support with 11 to his name. Liverpool follow in second with 59 goals, which is largely powered by the 30 goals provided by Mohamed Salah, along with 16 from Cody Gakpo, and Luis Díaz’s 13. Unlike their Catalan rivals, the Anfield club are far more reliant on their Egyptian goalscorer to stick the ball in the back of the net, with Salah accounting for 51% of the trio’s total goal output for the season thus far.
Close behind Liverpool are none other than Bayern Munich, whose attacking force consists of 29 goals from Harry Kane, 16 from Jamal Musiala and 12 from Michael Olise which amounts to a total of 57. This puts them just one goal ahead of Real Madrid’s star-studded line up of Kylian Mbappé (27 goals), Vinícius Jr (17), and Rodrygo (12), who have bagged an impressive 56 goals to date. Rather surprisingly, the fifth attacking line up on the list doesn’t come from one of Europe’s top five leagues but is in fact the remarkable exploits of Sporting’s front line. In total the Liga Portugal club have scored 54 goals, with the vast majority of them coming from striker Viktor Gyökeres. Which, to no surprise, explains why the towering striker has been heavily linked with a big-money transfer in the summer transfer window.
As we can see in the above graphic, just outside the top five are Turkish giants Fenerbahce with 53 goals this season scored by Youssef En-Nesyri (24), Edin Dzeko (19) and Dusan Tadic (10), followed in close pursuit by Atalanta’s attacking trio of Mateo Retegui, Ademola Lookman and Charles De Ketelaere contributing a combined 52 goals. Curiously, Atlético Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain’s attacking threes are level on 49 goals each and in tenth place we have none other than Xabi Alonso’s Bundesliga champions, with Bayer Leverkusen trio Florian Wirtz, Patrik Schick and Victor Boniface scoring 46 goals this season.