Football history is filled with extraordinary individual performances across seasons that have left supporters, commentators, and fellow professionals struggling to find adequate words to describe what they have witnessed. Certain players in certain seasons have transcended the normal boundaries of footballing excellence to produce campaigns that stand as genuinely historic achievements, redefining what is possible at the sport’s highest level and establishing personal benchmarks that remain unchallenged decades after they were set. This is our ranking of the greatest individual seasons ever delivered by a single football player.
1. Lionel Messi — FC Barcelona, 2011-12 Season
Lionel Messi’s 2011-12 season for FC Barcelona remains the most statistically extraordinary individual campaign in the history of professional football. He scored 91 goals across all competitions during the calendar year 2012, breaking the long-standing world record of 85 goals previously held by Gerd Müller, and scored 50 La Liga goals in that single season, a record that had never been approached before and has not been matched since. What makes Messi’s achievement so remarkable is not just the volume of goals but the quality and variety of each contribution — he scored against the full range of opposition across that season, and did so against the full defensive weight of the best organised and technically advanced defences in European football’s most competitive league. No single-season individual scoring performance in the sport’s history comes close to matching the breadth and depth of what Messi delivered in that extraordinary campaign.
2. Cristiano Ronaldo — Real Madrid, 2014-15 Season
Cristiano Ronaldo’s 2014-15 season for Real Madrid saw him score 48 La Liga goals in 35 appearances, breaking the competition’s all-time single-season scoring record that Messi had previously held. Combined with his Champions League and Copa del Rey contributions, Ronaldo scored an extraordinary total of 61 goals across all competitions and registered 18 assists in a campaign that demonstrated the extraordinary level of sustained finishing quality and physical presence that made him one of the two greatest players of his generation. He was awarded the FIFA Ballon d’Or for the third time after a campaign of quite remarkable individual excellence.
3. Ronaldo Nazário — FC Barcelona, 1996-97 Season
Ronaldo Nazário’s single season at FC Barcelona in 1996-97 was the most devastating and exciting individual campaign by any player in La Liga history at the time. The Brazilian teenager scored 47 goals across all competitions, won the FIFA World Player of the Year award, and produced performances of such extraordinary pace, power, and technical brilliance that defenders across Spain and Europe had genuinely no answer to what he was doing with the ball at his feet. He scored a solo goal in the Copa del Rey final against Atletico Madrid that is widely considered one of the greatest individual goals in the competition’s long history, and his subsequent departure for Inter Milan was the most celebrated transfer of the mid-1990s era.
4. Lionel Messi — FC Barcelona, 2009-10 Season
Messi’s 2009-10 season under Pep Guardiola was the one that first announced him to the world as clearly the greatest player on the planet. He scored 34 La Liga goals and 47 across all competitions, won the FIFA Ballon d’Or for the second consecutive year, and produced the kind of performances in Champions League knockout football that made watching him operate with the freedom and joy that Guardiola’s system provided one of the great privileges of the era. His two goals against Arsenal in the Nou Camp, with Cesc Fabregas — then still at Arsenal — watching from the other side, remain among the most technically accomplished Champions League quarter-final goals ever scored.
5. Erling Haaland — Manchester City, 2022-23 Season
Erling Haaland’s debut Premier League season at Manchester City in 2022-23 produced 36 league goals in 35 appearances, breaking the Premier League’s all-time single-season scoring record that had stood for 29 years since Andy Cole’s 34 goals in 1993-94. Combined with his Champions League contribution as City won the competition for the first time in the club’s history, Haaland scored 52 goals in all competitions in a campaign that demonstrated the extraordinary finishing efficiency and physical dominance that had made him the most destructive centre-forward in the modern game. The scale of his achievement in his first season in English football made him only the fourth player in Champions League’s history to score more than 10 goals in a single edition of the competition.
6. Gerd Müller — FC Bayern Munich, 1971-72 Season
Gerd Müller’s 1971-72 season at Bayern Munich saw him score 85 goals across all competitions — a world record that stood for 40 years until Messi broke it in 2012. His Bundesliga total of 40 goals in that campaign, combined with his extraordinary contribution to West Germany’s European Championship triumph the same summer, established Der Bomber as one of the most prolific goalscorers in the history of European football and a player whose influence on how the centre-forward position is coached and understood continues to resonate in the modern game.
7. Kylian Mbappé — PSG, 2021-22 Season
Kylian Mbappé’s 2021-22 season at Paris Saint-Germain produced 28 Ligue 1 goals and 17 assists in what was statistically his most complete individual campaign to that point. The combination of goals, assists, direct running, and the extraordinary physical and technical quality he demonstrated throughout the season made watching him one of the most compelling individual experiences available in European football. His contract renewal at PSG over Real Madrid in the final weeks of the season was one of the transfer saga’s most dramatic conclusions, and his subsequent eventual move to the Spanish capital was only a matter of time.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who had the best individual season in football history?
Lionel Messi’s 2011-12 season at Barcelona is widely regarded as the greatest individual season in football history. He scored 91 goals across all competitions in the calendar year 2012 and 50 La Liga goals that season alone — both world records.