For some footballers, a 30th birthday can mark a significant point in one's career. Turning that age often coincides with a downturn in performance, with players often citing a lack of pace and acceleration, and what often follows is a swansong. Or, in layman's terms, spending the concluding stages of their playing days in a lesser league.
Frowned upon as something like a kiss of death, that isn't always the case. On the odd occasion, there are players – and, in this particular case, strikers – who thrive after turning 30.
Some careers continue on the same track as they reach the age of 40 and there are a handful of players that are able to alter their style of play to ensure their career can extend for as long as possible. That is often the case for strikers and the art of goalscoring.
Here, we take a look at which 12 players in football history – courtesy of figures from Planet Football – who have managed to score the most goals after turning 30. Spoiler alert: Cristiano Ronaldo, who plied his trade all over Europe before heading to the Middle East to lead the line for Al-Nassr, is closing in on the top spot. But who are the other 11 players?
12 Lionel Messi – 324 goals
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Ever since he replaced Deco for Barcelona in October 2004, the footballing world has been Lionel Messi's oyster. The Argentine somewhat completed football by holding the 2022 World Cup aloft in Qatar three years ago – but, even before that, there was very little to wince at. Now 38 years of age, there are concerns over how long he has left playing what we call the beautiful game.
Utterly magical, Messi's goal tally of 324 goals since turning 30 years of age sees him just creep into this 12-man list. Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Miami are all clubs that have possessed the fleet-footed forward's services in that time; for the latter, he scored 68 goals and, for the French club, he notched 32.
11 Abe Lenstra – 328 goals
Albeit lesser-known, there is an argument that Abe Lenstra is one of the most legendary football players in the history of Dutch football – and he's certainly in esteemed company with Johan Cruyff, Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit and the like. He was born and raised in Friesland, a Dutch province in the northwest, but is fondly remembered for his free-scoring spell for Heerenveen.
Legend has it that Fiorentina once offered him a blank cheque, a house and an Opel car. He, dedicated to playing for Heerenveen and scoring an abundance of goals in the process, refused to pack up and leave. He, according to numerous outlets, notched 763 goals in 760 games for the Dutch club. Given he was chiefly a winger, it's not a very, very impressive tally.
10 Robert Lewandowski – 330 goals
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Never too far away from scoring a goal is Robert Lewandowski, who has made the art of goalscoring look like second nature ever since his debut for Delta Warszwara in March 2005. All in all, at the time of writing, Lewandowski has bagged north of 600 club goals, and an additional 87 for his country Poland, in just shy of 1,000 matches.
The talismanic Pole, who is now 37 years of age and reaching the latter stages of his career, turned 30 while on the books of Bayern Munich – and only a chunk of his strikes for the Bavarians counts towards his post-30 years of age tally. Thus far, he's scored 330 goals in that period of his career and 105 of those have come in Barcelona colours.
9 Tom Waring – 330 goals
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A Villa Park legend of the highest regard, Tom Waring turned out for Aston Villa in one of their most successful periods. Tramere Rovers, Waring's boyhood club, sold the striker to the Villans in February 1928. That was, incredibly, just 168 days after he made his senior debut for the club – but they felt the need to cash in and Waring, famously nicknamed 'Pongo', went on to score at an alarming rate for the Birmingham-based side.
That was primarily the case once he reached his 30s – and the goals, in bucketloads, continued to flow for the durable centre-forward, who also turned out for Barnsley and Accrington Stanley in a career heavily loaded with goals. His legacy at Villa is buoyed by his likeable personality but, most importantly, the fans had a soft spot for him purely because of how rampant he was.
8 Zlatan Ibrahimovic – 346 goals
Zlatan Ibrahimović
If we're being honest: there were not many types of goals Zlatan Ibrahimovic didn't have in his locker. Whether it was a simple, inside-the-box tap-in, a long-range strike which seems impossible or the utterly audacious, the towering Swede was often his club or country's go-to man, and he was equally potent in his post-30 years for the likes of AC Milan and Manchester United as he was before he hit that age.
Ibrahimovic, widely regarded as one of the greatest footballers to have never won the Ballon d'Or, was 30 years old when he joined Paris Saint-Germain in 2012, and he went on to score 156 goals in his 180-match spell for the French giants. Stints in England, Italy (again) and the United States followed... and so did the goals. All in all, he scored 346 goals once he had turned 30.
7 Erwin Helmchen – 360 goals
Erwin Helmchen's statistics simply prove one thing: goalscoring, for some, comes very easy and that is the case in regard to the German centre-forward. Incredibly, across his 28-year career, he holds the record for the most hat-tricks (141) in football history – and his eye-catching number of three-goal hauls just proves that he was devastating in the final third.
Helmchen, having bagged 989 goals in 582 official matches according to RSSSF, is also recognised as one of the most prolific strikers to ever play the beautiful game. Of the 989 goals he scored in his career, which took place between the two World Wars, a lofty 360 came once he had turned 30 years of age in 1937. A true goalscoring great is Helmchen.
6 Otto Harder – 373 goals
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Otto "Tull" Harder had an all-crucial on German football, paving the way for fellow countrymen Gerd Muller and the like – but it's likely that you've probably never heard of the former, especially compared to the latter. Alas, he wreaked havoc across back lines with his hulking size and overpowering heading ability, which resulted in plenty of goals being scored by the icon.
In fact, Harder – who played for the likes of Eintracht Braunshcweig and Hamburg throughout his club career – was seen as something of a bulldozing striker at the age of 18. And that continued into his 30s, and he's believed to have scored a total of 373 goals after turning 30 years of age.
5 Joseph Smith – 379 goals
Macron Stadium (Bolton Wanderers)
Although Joseph Smith's career was interrupted, like many others on this list, by the First World War, he was a talented centre-forward from Dudley, and he's a familiar name to those associated with Bolton Wanderers, a club he joined in 1908. At that point inexperienced, he made his competitive debut – against West Bromwich Albion – in the following year.
And, well, he became a goalscoring revelation in the northwest of England and spearheaded them to a third-placed finish in the First Division of the Football League in 1920/21. Not only that but his goals, of which he scored 379 after his 30th birthday, also helped them win the FA Cup in 1926. He also played for Stockport County and his player-manager stint at Darwen was sublime as he scored 42 goals in 51 outings in his hybrid role.
4 Romario – 451 goals
Brazil's Romario holding a Brazilian flag.
A footballing icon who should need very little to no introduction, Romario may not be remembered in the same vein as the likes of Ronaldo Nazario and Pele – but he rightfully etched his name into Brazilian football folklore with the eye-cathing number of goals that flowed. In fact, on the international scene, only six players have managed to score 50 goals quicker than the Rio de Janeiro-born icon.
At club level, the one-time World Cup winner spent the majority of his career bagging goals for fun in his homeland of Brazil and that, perhaps, has dented his status among some of the very best of all time. The fact that Romario played until 43 years of age plays into his hands here and, statistically speaking, he notched a grand total of 451 goals following his 30th birthday.
3 Josef Bican – 466 goals
A true bagsman of the highest order, 1913-born Josef Bican had a brilliantly illustrious career and won plenty of silverware in Austria. Incredibly, proving that he was much more than just a serial goalscorer, the Czech talisman could run the 100 metres in 10.8 seconds and his sheer pace allowed him to muster goalscoring opportunities as if they were going out of fashion.
Even throughout the Second World War – which took place between 1939 and 1945 – Bican remained as prolific as ever in the final third and his tally for Slavia Prague, 534 goals in 291 official games, is quite remarkable. From 30 years of age onward, he showed very few signs of slowing down from the perspective of hitting the back of the net, notching a total of 466 strikes.