No players are more coveted in world football than the forwards who score the goals, take the defense on, and create the chances that win matches. Every elite club needs an elite forward – and really two – in order to compete at the highest level and truly be an elite team at the Champions League level.
So let’s take a look at the 10 best forwards in the game, focusing on strikers and wingers whose primary job is to score the goals and create the assists that win their teams’ matches. Many of these players are strikers and inverted wingers, because those are the positions that make the biggest difference on the score line in the modern game.
10. Christopher Nkunku
Christopher Nkunku will head to Chelsea for the 2023/24 season after being the best Bundesliga player over the last three seasons. In 2020, Chelsea bought Timo Werner from RB Leipzig after his career year, only to send him back to the Bundesliga in 2022. Werner’s explosion was largely due to Nkunku’s underrated genius as Leipzig’s primary creator. And then after Werner left, Nkunku became the primary goal-scorer and creator, exploding as a legitimate Ballon d’Or candidate in 2021/22.
So in a roundabout way, Chelsea may have landed the real gem of Leipzig and someone who fits what they need even more. Nkunku has a knack for coming up big in the most important games, such as in the last two DFB Pokal victories. The Frenchman is still only 25 years old despite being one of the best all-around forwards in European football over the last four seasons. He surpassed 12 assists and 15 goals in two of those campaigns.
9. Victor Osimhen
Napoli striker Victor Osimhen emerged as one of the most talented up-and-coming strikers in Europe during the 2019/20 season with Lille, earning a move to Napoli just a couple of seasons later. Injuries slowed Osimhen a bit to start his career in Naples, but anyone who watched Serie A every week could tell that the Nigerian had that something special. He just needed one more star player next to him in the attack so that he could truly explode.
Well, as fortune would have it, Napoli invested in the most highly-sought young prospect in Serie A, a Georgian winger by the name of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. The dynamic duo led Napoli to its first Scudetto since Diego Armando Maradona graced his presence in the romantic Italian city. Osimhen entrenched himself as one of the world’s best strikers, scoring 26 goals with 4 assists as the leading goal-scorer in Calcio.
Now the subject of intense transfer speculation, Osimhen could cost a team as much as 150 million euros, as the enigmatic Aurelio De Laurentiis clearly understands the 24-year-old striker’s value on the transfer market.
8. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia
Osimhen may be the costlier player on the transfer market, but Khvicha Kvaratskhelia was the MVP of Serie A last season and the No. 1 superstar for Napoli because of all the things he did to lead the team to victory.
From the moment he stepped foot in Naples, Kvaratskhelia looked like the best player in Serie A, bamboozling defenders and inspiring fans at home with his explosive dribbling skills. A truly two-footed winger, Kvara could hold width and cross with his left, cut inside and score Lorenzo Insigne-esque curlers with his right, or switch the ball between his feet in an instant to finish off a brilliant solo goal in the box.
Kvaratskhelia is a 22-year-old with the leadership traits of a 32-year-old. He plays as if Napoli is his own true love, and since his playing style awakens the football romantic in all of us, it would be truly special to see him as a one-club man. However, Kvaratskhelia’s skill set is so unique and game-changing that every top club will want him. Real Madrid already have the wings filled with Rodrygo Goes and Vinícius Júnior, but Kvara did idolize the club as a child.
7. Mohamed Salah
Mohamed Salah is one of the most prolific players in the history of the Premier League. The Egyptian icon scored 32 goals with 10 assists in his first season with Liverpool back in 2017/18. And just last season, Salah reached double-digit goals and assists in a single league season for the fifth time in his illustrious career.
Even though the 2022/23 season was seen as a down year by Salah’s lofty standards, the 2021/22 Ballon d’Or candidate still has 19 goals and 12 assists to go with an average of 1.7 key passes and 1.3 dribbles completed per game. Liverpool may not have qualified for European football at all in 2023/24 without Salah’s quality in the final third.
Without a stable midfield structure, Salah had to do even more progressive work on the ball and had to create even more chances for the other forwards, particularly with more central players like Darwin Núñez and Cody Gakpo joining the attack. At 31, Salah is one of the best-conditioned athletes in football and is honestly as strong as ever. There are no signs of any sort of physical decline from one of the world’s elite left-footed wingers.
6. Robert Lewandowski
Robert Lewandowski surprised some football fans when he decided to walk away from perennially breaking records for Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga, as he wanted the challenge of being the centerpiece player for Barcelona in LaLiga. The Spanish top flight is known for its physical defenses, challenging strikers to a different degree. Additionally, Bayern have dominated the Bundesliga for a decade, whereas Barça were searching for their first league title since the 2018/19 season.
There’s no doubt that Lewandowski’s first season with Barcelona was a rousing success. The Polish international led the league with 23 goals, reminding fans around the world that he is also one of the best all-around strikers in the history of the game. Lewandowski had seven assists, 1.4 fouls drawn per game, and. 1.1 key passes per match.
Beyond the important goals in 1-0 matches that proved vital to Barça winning LaLiga, Lewandowski lifted up the Blaugrana by being a reference point for the other attackers. He had some world-class combinations with Pedri that led to goals, and he was courageous when it came to holding the ball in the box and waiting to feed the other forwards inside the area. With better service in 2023/24, Lewandowski should score even more goals in his second season with Barcelona.
5. Antoine Griezmann
The best LaLiga player of the 2022/23 season, Antoine Griezmann dominated Spanish football after Atlético Madrid and Barcelona sorted out a contract situation that prevented the world-class Frenchman from actually starting matches at the beginning of the season.
Griezmann nearly elevated Atléti to second in the league, as they fell just one point shy of rivals Real Madrid in the end. The pink-haired left-footer produced moments of magic that nobody else in LaLiga could, particularly when it came to the passes he picked out in transition or over the top. Griezmann’s eye for the killer through ball is on a level perhaps only surpassed by Manchester City maestro Kevin De Bruyne.
Arguably one of the most disrespected superstars of the last decade, Griezmann’s return to prominence in his Atléti reunion has been one of the best storylines in LaLiga. He finished the 2022/23 campaign with 15 goals, 16 assists, and 2.2 key passes per game. Those are phenomenal statistics.
4. Harry Kane
Harry Kane is the best all-around striker in the game now that Karim Benzema has ended his career at the highest level after an injury-plagued 2022/23 season. The Tottenham Hotspur superstar was arguably the best player in the Premier League when contextualizing the issues in the starting lineup surrounding him, as well as his ability to impact every phase of the game, including dropping deep to win possession.
Last season, Kane scored 30 goals for a Spurs team that didn’t even qualify for the Conference League. Many of those goals were brilliant individual efforts from out of nothing, showcasing the absolute highest standard of technical play at the striker position in world football today.
Additionally, Kane averaged 1.5 key passes per game, providing excellent creative and hold-up play despite a relatively low number of assists, largely due to the poor performances of the players around him. It will be intriguing to watch the synergy between himself and new signing James Maddison.
3. Vinícius Júnior
Any of the players in this top three have a case for being No. 1, and what Vinícius Júnior has accomplished over the past couple of seasons as the new clear No. 1 star at Real Madrid is nothing short of remarkable. In the face of rampant racism that has gone frustratingly unpunished by LaLiga’s incompetent leadership, Vini has remained, by far, the best player in his position both in LaLiga and, since Kylian Mbappé was a striker for PSG last season, in Europe as a whole.
Viní dominates games all on his own, taking on the full responsibility of being Real Madrid’s main progressor, creator in the attacking third, and even goal-scorer amidst Benzema’s injury issues. The modern-day Brazilian icon followed up a Ballon d’Or-level 2021/22 breakout season by scoring 10 goals with 9 assists in LaLiga and 7 goals and 5 assists in an even better 2022/23 Champions League campaign for Los Merengues.
You wonder what Vini’s numbers would have looked like with a fully fit Benzema or a better attacking situation in general, given the 22-year-old was often facing double and even triple-teams. But that is a testament to Vini’s resiliency and uncanny ability to create clear-cut chances from thin air.
2. Erling Haaland
No player in world football had a more dominant 2022/23 season than Erling Haaland, who already fulfilled his destiny as the man to get Manchester City over the hump in the Champions League. Plus, City continued their dominance of the Premier League, overcoming an early deficit in the table to take down the up-and-coming Arsenal. Imagine that people had the audacity to say signing Haaland made City worse!
The former Borussia Dortmund and RB Salzburg star was a smashing success in his inaugural season with his father’s old club, breaking a Premier League record with a staggering 36 goals, getting stronger as. the season went on and Pep Guardiola learned how to take full advantage of Haaland’s unique skill set within a tried-and-true tactical scheme.
Far from just a goal-scorer, which is the ridiculous criticism levied against him by envious rival fanbases, Haaland added eight assists. He is able to do less with more, which makes him such an efficient scorer and creator. Even at Dortmund, he was adept at finding teammates with slight flicks, utilizing the same abilities to read the game and drift into space to help teammates.
1. Kylian Mbappé
The best player in world football right now, Kylian Mbappé could produce so much better statistics if he didn’t have to soften his ruthless attacking style in order to accommodate veterans Neymar and Lionel Messi. But more to the point, Mbappé was held back by a poorly-constructed squad with major question marks in midfield and at center back that severely hurt PSG’s defensive structure, overall stability in possession, and creation in the deepest build-up phases.
After failing to make the requisite upgrades in these areas during the summer transfer window, you can see why Mbappé transfer rumors to Real Madrid are heating up again. And you wonder why Mbappé chose to remain in Paris in the first place.
Despite all these issues, Mbappé’s 2022/23 highlight reel and individual statistics are worth praising effusively, and that includes an unforgettable World Cup in which he nearly carried France back to life in the final vs. Lionel Messi and Argentina.
Mbappé scored 29 goals with 5 assists, averaging 3.4 combined dribbles and fouls drawn per game with 1.6 key passes per game for PSG last season. His movement off the ball and combination play at striker were the best of his career, as he added new layers to his game in terms of “soft” skills to help PSG win matches. As much as he is unfairly miscast as being a selfish forward, he does put the team first. But he is at his best when he gets to play like his idol, Cristiano Ronaldo, ruling the attacking zones as the main goal-scorer for a team.
