Who are the best strikers in world football right now? With two months of action in the books in the 2024/25 league seasons, let’s take an updated look at the best No. 9’s on the planet, ranking them from tenth to first. Where did Robert Lewandowski and Harry Kane land? How does Ollie Watkins stack up with the elites?
10. Andrej Kramaric, Hoffenheim
For years, Andrej Kramaric has been one of the best strikers in the Bundesliga, setting records as a goal-scorer for Hoffenheim without showing any desire to leave the German side.
Kramaric makes this list over bigger names like Alvaro Morata and Dusan Vlahovic, because he honestly outplayed both of those guys significantly last season and has already been better to start the 2023/24 season.
The problem with world football these days is you have a lot of people who only care about the biggest countries and clubs, so someone like Kramaric gets neglected on a club like Hoffenheim that gets no real English-based coverage.
Last season, Kramaric morphed his game more as a creator to help accommodate young breakout star Maximilian Beier, who parlayed that partnership into a major deal with Borussia Dortmund.
Kramaric scored 15 goals for the fourth time in his career while registering 6 assists and averaging 2.6 key passes per game, putting up the kind of statistics you’d expect from an elite 9 or 10.
9. Marcus Thuram, Inter Milan
Marcus Thuram is another great, all-around striker with a Bundesliga pedigree, and his stock has skyrocketed since leaving Borussia Monchengladbach for a Champions League side that gets considerably more attention in the media, Inter Milan.
If anything, Thuram has been an upgrade as Lautaro Martinez’s striker partner, and it says something that he’s made Inter fans completely forget about Romelu Lukaku, who was a Serie A MVP for the Nerazzurri in 2020/21.
Thuram had 13 goals and 6 assists for Gladbach in the 2022/23 season, and he improved those numbers in Serie A with 13 goals and 7 assists for an Inter side that ran away with the league title.
He was so good at the club level that the French national team started him as their main man in the middle at Euro 2024, and he played pretty well for them, too, putting in the dirty work to make Kylian Mbappe’s life a little easier.
8. Deniz Undav, Stuttgart
Stuttgart lost Serhou Guirassy to Borussia Dortmund this past summer, and after scoring 28 goals in a breakout 2023/24 campaign, Guirassy could climb back onto this list if business picks up for BVB.
But Deniz Undav, Stuttgart’s current main striker, is honestly a more impressive all-around striker than Guirassy, and you wonder if Brighton missed out on a world-class gem here.
Undav was tabbed for greatness by fans of the lower German leagues who saw him as a cult hero capable of tearing anyone apart. He then moved to the Belgian top flight where he scored a ridiculous 51 league goals and 21 assists in two seasons for Union St. Gilloise before moving to Brighton.
Last season, Undav scored 18 goals and 9 assists for Stuttgart and is now sitting on four goals in four games for the Schwaben in the Bundesliga. Cult hero and now Bundesliga Player of the Season candidate, Undav is the next in a long line of underrated German No. 9’s.
7. Ollie Watkins, Aston Villa
Ollie Watkins came almost out of nowhere to become the second-best striker in the Premier League after record-breaker Erling Haaland, and you could argue that the Aston Villa No. 9 was superior to the Manchester City star in the 2023/24 season.
Strikers who can create chances and score goals are at a premium these days, and aside from Harry Kane and maybe Antoine Griezmann – depending on if you view him as a 9 or not – Watkins has been the best all-around striker in Europe’s top five leagues.
The 28-year-old has actually been a double-digit goal-scorer and one of the Premier League’s better 9’s since arriving to the top flight from Brentford, finding the back of the net 14 times in the 2020/21 season with 5 assists for good measure.
But it’s an entirely different equation when a striker scores 19 goals with 13 assists in a Premier League season and helps lead Aston Villa to the Champions League. Only the elite, established names of the last five years of world football can say they are better strikers than Watkins right now.
6. Robert Lewandowski, Barcelona
Decline is finally starting to get to Robert Lewandowski, but the Barcelona star striker remains one of the best at the position in European football. Even a down year for Lewandowski yields 19 goals and 8 assists.
If Barcelona weren’t so determined to start a youth movement and cut wages, the 36-year-old making 30 million euros per season wouldn’t be so heavily criticized by Culers.
Barcelona would not have won the league in 2022/23 without Lewandowski, and they would have been demonstrably worse without him last season due to an overall dearth of goal-scoring quality.
Reunited with Hansi Flick, the coach who helped him win a treble and turned him into an even bigger killer in front of goal, Lewandowski already has 7 goals and 2 assists in his first 8 games of the 2024/25 LaLiga season for Barcelona.
5. Lautaro Martinez, Inter Milan
Although it would be a step too far to suggest that Lautaro Martinez win the 2024 Ballon d’Or over Real Madrid superstars Vinicius Junior or Jude Bellingham after their triumphant Champions League campaigns, Lautaro should have always been mentioned as a top candidate since the start of the 2023/24 campaign.
Something in Martinez switched in the middle of the 2022/23 season when Inter Milan were being criticized from all corners and Simone Inzaghi’s job appeared to be on the line.
Inter turned it around with Martinez leading by example as a scorer, creator, and even defender. They reached the Champions League Final and won Coppa Italia. A year later, they won Serie A over rivals AC Milan by nearly 20 points with Lautaro raising his game even further.
In the last three Serie A seasons, Lautaro has scored at least 21 goals, and he is coming off 24 for Inter in the 2023/24 campaign. As talented as Victor Osimhen and Rafael Leao are, you wonder why they’ve been getting all the hype over the Inter Milan man.
4. Antoine Griezmann, Atletico Madrid
Everyone seems to take Antoine Griezmann for granted, possibly because all of the attention on global superstar Kylian Mbappe and then before that, Karim Benzema’s incredible 2021/22 season for Real Madrid as the Ballon d’Or winner.
Griezmann has been one of the world’s best for over a decade, helping turn Atletico Madrid into a powerhouse. Funnily enough, he wasn’t a part of the Atleti sides that won the league, only recently returning to the Spanish capital after a silly decision to move to a Lionel Messi-led Barcelona.
Back as the main man under Diego Simeone, Griezmann had 15 goals and 16 assists as the best player in LaLiga in the 2022/23 season and then followed that up with a nifty 2023/24 campaign alongside Alvaro Morata, scoring 16 goals with 6 assists.
His silky-smooth skills and technique have stood the test of time, and Griezmann has become better with age because he is a more mature and refined playmaker who helps the team more defensively through his pressing. He really is Simeone’s dream flair forward.
3. Kylian Mbappe, Real Madrid
It is going to take Kylian Mbappe time to truly come into his own as a Real Madrid No. 9, because it is a responsibility that weighs heavy on players due to the all-around nature of the position.
Real Madrid strikers are expected to score 20-30 goals per season, at a minimum, while bringing the goal-scoring wingers into the game with their passing, dribbling, and movement off the ball.
At times, Mbappe has shown the ability to meet the benchmark of the position in the modern game, which is his former French national teammate Karim Benzema.
Mbappe isn’t as refined technically or as successful creatively, but he is more dynamic and arguably a better finisher. As he continues to mature at a club like Real Madrid that will actually push him, unlike PSG, we could see Mbappe fulfill his destiny as the best true striker in world football.
2. Erling Haaland, Manchester City
A goal-scoring machine, Erling Haaland is a scary combination of athleticism and dead-eye finishing. He broke the single-season record for goals in a Premier League campaign in his first year at Manchester City after tearing through the Bundesliga, and he’s already at double-digit goals in 2024/25.
Haaland was a good creator at Dortmund because of his work ethic and football IQ, but his actual dribbling skills and movement have stagnated in the Man City system that makes life very cookie-cutter for the Norwegian superstar.
So in that sense, Haaland is still behind Harry Kane because the latter can simply do more for his teammates at the highest level in terms of creating clear chances. Haaland is the best scorer on the planet and should be the best striker in the world, but he isn’t quite there yet. But the fact that he’s so close at 24 is a testament to his quality.
1. Harry Kane, Bayern Munich
Harry Kane is the benchmark and the best striker in the world. He has, likewise, been setting records since stepping foot at Bayern Munich, even if his trophyless curse continues after Bayer Leverkusen’s spellbinding undefeated Bundesliga season in 2023/24.
Had Kane’s defense, midfield, and wingers around him been more up to the usual Bayern standard, we’d likely be singing a different tune about the England international.
If he had Lewandowski’s supporting cast in Bavaria, surely he’d shatter Gerd Muller’s record, too. As it stands, Kane was more than impressive in his maiden Bundesliga campaign, firing 36 goals with 8 assists in the league while adding 8 goals and 4 assists as Bayern nearly reached the Champions League Final.
Kane has 5 goals and 4 assists in 5 Bundesliga matches to start the 2024/25 season under Vincent Kompany, and with the Belgian coach igniting a fire under a previously spiraling Bayern side, you have to think Kane will put some truly frightening numbers on Bundesliga and Champions League defenses alike.
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The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. His work has been featured in ESPN, Bleacher Report, Yahoo! Sports, NBC Sports, and other major outlets. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.