About the Project

This website is the published result of an independent data science project focused on one of soccer’s most persistent debates: who is the greatest international striker of all time?

Why the project exists

The question is simple to ask and difficult to answer. Traditional discussions often hinge on reputation, era, or personal preference. This project instead uses structured evidence from international goal data to evaluate the strongest candidates across several measurable dimensions.

What the dataset contains

The dataset records international goals with enough detail to support a meaningful comparison of scoring profiles. Each row captures a single goal and includes fields such as:

the date of the match,
the national team,
the scorer,
the minute of the goal,
whether the goal came from a penalty,
the goal type,
the year and decade.

That structure makes it possible to study not only who scored the most, but how those goals were produced.

How the analysis is built

The site evaluates the leading candidates through a combination of:

raw scoring volume,
open-play share as a measure of scoring quality,
efficiency across active years,
career longevity and consistency,
a composite model that weighs those signals together.

This is not a fully comprehensive historical audit. It is a disciplined statistical framework for comparing elite international strikers in a transparent way.

What the project does and does not claim

The analysis is designed to sharpen the discussion rather than settle it with absolute certainty. The available data provides a strong foundation, but it cannot capture every layer of context that shapes a historical judgment.

The current dataset does not include factors such as:

minutes played,
caps earned,
opponent strength,
match importance.

Those omissions matter, and they are important limitations. Even so, the project offers a credible and defensible first look at the question through a modern analytics lens.