Women's Champions League: Ada Hegerberg reigns as all-time top scorer

Ada Hegerberg continues to lead the way as the all-time top scorer in UEFA women's club competition, having surged past previous record holder Anja Mittag in 2019.

German forward Mittag, who retired in May 2019, became the first player to 50 goals in the UEFA Women's Champions League and its predecessor the UEFA Women's Cup on 11 October 2017, scoring for Rosengård against Olimpia Cluj in the round of 32.

The German international won two European titles with first club Turbine Potsdam, also turning out for the likes of Paris Saint-Germain and Wolfsburg.

Mittag took 68 games to get to 50 goals, but Hegerberg needed only 49 when she converted a penalty away to Fortuna Hjørring in the round of 16 in October 2019, scoring again later to equal Mittag's final tally of 51.

Hegerberg then marked her own 50th continental game by notching goals 52 and 53 in the second leg, taking her clear in the record books. On the opening night of the 2023/24 campaign, she got to 60 in her 62nd European appearance and now has that tally for Lyon alone.

We look at the competition's all-time top ten, with Pernille Harder the latest to join the list in October 2024.

1 Ada Hegerberg (Stabæk/Turbine Potsdam/Lyon) 64

Having now claimed six European titles with Lyon, and back from serious injury, the Norwegian forward is threatening to rewrite the competition record books in the way Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have done in the men's UEFA Champions League.

Hegerberg had already scored two goals in Europe for both Stabæk and Turbine Potsdam when she joined Lyon in 2014, and since then she has spearheaded their success. The striker notably hit 15 Champions League goals in 2017/18 to beat the record of 14 for a single campaign, having also struck 13 when she was top scorer in Lyon's 2015/16 victory.

Hegerberg's 2019 final hat-trick lifted her into the top four of the goal charts ahead of some past and present club-mates, and she overtook Marta with a treble at Ryazan-VDV to open 2019/20. Her second-leg goals were her 44th and 45th in Europe for Lyon, setting a new single-club record.

The following game, Lyon's 100th in the competition, she drew level with Mittag, breaking the record in her 50th European appearance with two more strikes. A serious injury in January 2020 ruled her out for more than 18 months, but on her return she reached 50 in Europe for Lyon alone in the first minute of a group game at Benfica. Hegerberg then scored a crucial quarter-final goal against Juventus, struck again at Paris Saint-Germain in the semis and was on target in the decider with Barcelona.

Injury meant she didn't score in the 2022/23 European campaign, but a penalty away to Slavia Praha took Hegerberg to 60 goals on Matchday 1 the following season and she has continued to add to her haul. Indeed, by the end of Matchday 5 she had reached 60 for Lyon alone in Europe.

2 Anja Mittag (Turbine Potsdam/Rosengård/Paris Saint-Germain/Wolfsburg) 51

Anja Mittag at Potsdam©Getty Images

Mittag scored for Potsdam in the 2005 final against Djurgården and was also part of Turbine's 2010 win before her move to Sweden. After then switching to Paris, Mittag got her 49th goal in Europe back in Sweden against Örebro but was not able to get to 50 prior to her move to Wolfsburg as a freshly minted Olympic gold medallist. She did not score in Europe in six appearances for her new club before a 2017 return to Rosengård. Now retired, her feat of reaching 50 goals was not matched until Hegerberg did it five months later.

3= Eugénie Le Sommer (Lyon) 48

Le Sommer has been part of all eight of Lyon's victories, and scored in three finals (2012, 2018, 2020). She opened her account on her first two European appearances, away and at home against AZ Alkmaar in 2010/11, kicking off an illustrious career with the French side.

Three goals in the 2018/19 quarter-final with Wolfsburg took her past 40, and a last-four strike versus Chelsea meant she moved within one of Abily's total of 43. Le Sommer equalled that on her 70th appearance, the 2019/20 round of 32 second leg at home to Ryazan-VDV, and she surpassed it with two more at Fortuna in the last 16. The French forward moved level with Marta by registering in the second leg and overtook her by opening the scoring in the 2020 final against Wolfsburg. She moved up to third at the start of 2023/24.

3= Conny Pohlers (Turbine Potsdam/FFC Frankfurt/Wolfsburg) 48

Pohlers hit 14 goals en route to victory in Potsdam's debut season of 2004/05, a record since only matched by Margrét Lára Vidarsdóttir in 2008/09 and Frankfurt's Célia Šašić in 2014/15. After joining Frankfurt, Pohlers scored three goals in the 2008 final and added two more titles at Wolfsburg in her last two playing seasons of 2012/13 and 2013/14. Pohlers's tally of 48 goals took just 45 appearances, ten fewer than Mittag needed to reach that tally.

5 Marta (Umeå/Tyresö/Rosengård) 46

At Rosengård, Mittag replaced Marta, as she moved back to the United States with Orlando Pride. The Brazil striker was 18 when she made her European bow for Umeå, scoring in both legs of their 2003/04 semi-final win against Brøndby and three more in the two defeats of Frankfurt in the final. Surprisingly Marta has not lifted the trophy again, losing finals with Umeå in 2007 and 2008 and then in 2014 with Tyresö. Marta then got four goals in Rosengård's run to the 2014/15 quarter-finals and another five the next season, including a round of 16 hat-trick against Verona.

6= Camille Abily (Montpellier/Lyon) 43

Abily's 40th, 41st and 42nd goals (all for Lyon) were registered on 15 November 2017, the night she not only equalled the retired Emma Byrne's competition appearance record of 77 games (a record she held outright at 81 until Wendie Renard equalled it in the 2018/19 semi-finals) but also overtook former club-mate Lotta Schelin's previous best for a single team in this competition (since beaten by Hegerberg).

Having helped Montpellier reach the 2005/06 semi-finals, the versatile midfielder and attacker joined Lyon for a three-year spell and returned in 2010, since when Abily has aided them to their record five titles. And that 43rd goal was the one that made the 2018 final 4-1 against Wolfsburg on Abily's farewell off the bench.

6= Kim Little (Hibernian/Arsenal) 43

After reclaiming a top-ten spot with penalties for the Gunners in both 2021/22 round 2 legs against Slavia Praha, Little reached 40 with another spot kick in the group stage versus Hoffenheim, and then started 2022/23 with ... a round 2 penalty against Ajax. Little then converted another in the group stage away to Zürich, and her 43rd came in September 2024 against her Scottish compatriots Rangers, her ninth European goal in a row to come from the spot. That meant Little has scored in an 11th European season, including ten for Arsenal.

She was 17 when she opened her European account for Hibernian in 2007 with five goals in three qualifying games and then switched to Arsenal – for whom she hit a hat-trick against Zürich on her first UEFA competition appearance for the club in October 2008. By the time she left Arsenal for the United States at the end of 2013, Little was in the competition's top-ten scorers, and following her 2018 return she worked her way back in ahead of Inka Grings, whose 38 European goals came in only 29 games.

8 Lotta Schelin (Lyon/Rosengård) 42

Sweden striker Schelin – like Mittag, Marta and Nina Burger – may never have topped the scorers' chart, but her consistent goal-getting was a feature of Lyon's campaigns as they managed three titles in eight seasons. That included victories in 2011, 2012 and 2016, though oddly in her four final appearances Schelin never scored.

She bowed out from Lyon to return to Sweden after the 2016 final defeat of Wolfsburg, converting in the penalty shoot-out. By then, she had overtaken Burger as the player with the most goals for a single club in this competition, moving on to 41 with strikes in both legs of the semi-final against Mittag's Paris (a record now taken by Hegerberg). Schelin joined Rosengård in summer 2016 and soon opened her European account there. She retired in August 2018.

9= Nina Burger (Neulengbach) 40

Austria striker Burger made a bit of history in 2014/15 as she became the first player to score 40 goals for one team in UEFA women's club competition, having returned to Neulengbach from a spell in the United States with Houston Dash. She ended her career in 2019 with Sand in the German Frauen-Bundesliga.

9= Pernille Harder (Linköping, Wolfsburg, Chelsea, Bayern München) 40

Harder made her European debut in 2014 for Linköping, scoring in her third appearance against former runners-up Zvezda-2005, but it was after her move to Wolfsburg at the start of 2017 that the Danish international began to become a force in this competition. In 2017/18, when Harder was named UEFA Women's Player of the Year, she scored eight Champions League goals, including the strike that gave Wolfsburg an extra-time lead in the final against Lyon, who came back to win 4-1.

The following season, her eight goals made her competition top scorer, and in 2019/20 Harder hit nine, including four in a one-off quarter-final against Glasgow City, before Wolfsburg were again pipped to the title by Lyon. Harder was again named UEFA Women’s Player of the Year and switched to Chelsea, registering in both legs of the quarter-final against Wolfsburg as she reached the decider once more, only to lose to Barcelona.

Five more efforts followed (including another versus Wolfsburg) in two more Chelsea campaigns before Harder joined Bayern in 2023. She was limited by injury in her first European season there, but in 2024/25 she started with a hat-trick against Arsenal on her 50th Champions League appearance and reached the top ten the following week by scoring at Juventus.

11 Hanna Ljungberg (Umeå) 39

Long-time rankings leader Hanna Ljungberg©Sportsfile

The single-club record was long held by Ljungberg, and indeed the Sweden forward topped the all-time competition rankings for a decade from 2002/03, when she scored ten as Umeå secured their first title, until Pohlers finally overhauled her in 2012/13. Had injury not constantly disrupted and then finally ended Ljungberg's career in July 2009, she might still lead the table, having scored at a rate of exactly one per game in Europe.

Clubs indicated are those which each player represented in Europe, even if they did not score. Numbers correct as of 13 November 2024

Season by season top scorers (including qualifying)

2023/24: Marie Alidou (Benfica), Romée Leuchter (Ajax) 9
2022/23: Ewa Pajor (Wolfsburg) 9
2021/22: Alexia Putellas (Barcelona) 11
2020/21: Jenni Hermoso (Barcelona), Fran Kirby (Chelsea) 6
2019/20: Vivianne Miedema (Arsenal), Emueje Ogbiagbevha (Minsk), Berglind Thorvaldsdóttir (Breidablik) 10
2018/19: Pernille Harder (Wolfsburg) 8
2017/18: Ada Hegerberg (Lyon) 15
2016/17: Zsanett Jakabfi (Wolfsburg), Vivianne Miedema (Bayern München) 8
2015/16: Ada Hegerberg (Lyon) 13
2014/15: Célia Šašić (FFC Frankfurt) 14
2013/14: Milena Nikolić (ŽFK Spartak) 11
2012/13: Laura Rus (Apollon Limassol) 11
2011/12: Camille Abily, Eugénie Le Sommer (both Lyon) 9
2010/11: Inka Grings (Duisburg) 13
2009/10: Vanessa Bürki (Bayern München) 11
2008/09: Margrét Lára Vidarsdóttir (Valur Reykjavík) 14
2007/08: Vira Dyatel (Kharkiv), Patrizia Panico (Bardolino Verona), Margrét Lára Vidarsdóttir (Valur Reykjavík) 9
2006/07: Julie Fleeting (Arsenal) 9
2005/06: Margrét Lára Vidarsdóttir (Valur Reykjavík) 11
2004/05: Conny Pohlers (Turbine Potsdam) 14
2003/04: Maria Gstöttner (Neulengbach) 11
2002/03: Hanna Ljungberg (Umeå) 10
2001/02: Gabriela Enache (Codru Anenii Noi) 12