Two Brazilian players without renown, with long careers and marked by wanderings in several clubs, can include in the curriculum a fact obtained by few compatriots: having more goals in a year than Lionel Messi.
In 2022, when he reached his sporting peak, leading Argentina to win the World Cup in Qatar, the 35-year-old Argentine recorded, according to a survey by the IFFHS (International Federation of Football History and Statistics), 35 goals.
Messi scored 35 goals: 17 for Paris Saint-Germain and 18 for the Argentina national team. He is, on the IFFHS list, the only athlete to have scored more goals in the year for his country than for his team.
In the list of the institution founded in 1984 in Germany and whose headquarters are in the city of Bonn, Messi is in 11th place. At the top appears Frenchman Kylian Mbappé, 24, world runner-up in Qatar and Messi’s colleague at PSG, with 56 goals in 2022.
In the top 10 are two Brazilians, thirty like Messi, who never had an opportunity in the Brazilian national team, and with good reason, since they never achieved great prominence wherever they went.
That until now. Each, living in a faraway country, playing in obscure national leagues, became local idols due to the barrage of goals in 2022.
Bérgson (Gustavo Silveira da Silva), 31, from Alegrete, was the second highest scorer last year, tied with the famous Norwegian Haaland. Defending Johor Darul Ta’zim, he scored 46 goals, including local championship and national or international Cups.
Power in the Southeast Asian country, Johor Darul Ta’zim is the reigning champion of Malaysia.
In the base categories, Bergson played for the two big ones in Rio Grande do Sul, first at Internacional, then at Grêmio, where he became a professional. He never established himself, being constantly loaned to clubs in Brazil, mainly, and abroad.
He went through Juventude, Ypiranga-RS, Vila Nova-GO, Portuguesa, Chapecoense, Paysandu (where he stood out, being one of the top scorers in Série B do Brasileiro in 2017) and Náutico. Outside the country, he was in Portugal and South Korea.
Before venturing into Malaysia, which occurred in 2021, Bérgson still wore the shirts of Athletico-PR, Ceará and Fortaleza.
In seventh position on the IFFHS list of top scorers in 2022 is Tiago (Lima Leal), 34, known as Azulão. There were 39 goals for Petro de Luanda, for the local championship and national or international Cups.
Thiago Azulão, who has been playing for the Angolan club since 2016, is like Bérgson a football wanderer.
Born in São Paulo, he wore, according to himself, the shirt of São Paulo. Then he migrated to Minas Gerais to play for Tombense, in 2008. There, he started to be constantly loaned until he was traded in 2014 with CRB (Alagoas).
Before stopping in Angola (a Portuguese-speaking African country), he played for some clubs in Minas Gerais (Guarani, Uberlândia, Villa Nova, Caldense), Oeste (SP) and Fortaleza, also playing Turkish and Malaysian football.
At Petro, he became an idol, and the explanation about the nickname (Azulão) he gave himself, in an interview on a page of a social network that accompanies Petro.
“Azulão appeared when I started playing, at the age of 10. At school I wore my own training uniform that I had won from a neighbor, “all blue clothes and boots”, so because of the color, friends started calling me from Azulão. It caught on and stayed until today. I like it.”
There are those who might question that being a top scorer playing in Malaysia or Angola is a piece of cake.
It’s certainly easier than shining in big ball centers, but it was precisely the two, and not other athletes, who put their name on the IFFHS list.
They will never make it to the Brazilian national team, but there is merit in each one’s achievement. Several and several try and fail to have this poster.
Next, the list of the ten players who scored the most goals in 2022 – remembering that Messi was in 11th place.
- Kylian Mbappé (PSG/France), Frenchman – 56 goals
- Erling Haaland (Borussia Dortmund/Germany and Manchester City/England), Norwegian – 46 goals
- bergson (Johor Darul Ta’zim/Malaysia), Brazilian – 46 goals
- Germán Cano (Fluminense), Argentine – 44 goals
- Robert Lewandowski (Bayern/Germany and Barcelona/Spain), Polish player – 42 goals
- Boris Kapitovic (Tampines Rovers/Singapore), Montenegrin – 41 goals
- Mehdi Taremi (Porto/Portugal), Iranian – 39 goals
- Tiago Azulão (Petro de Luanda/Angola), Brazilian – 39 goals
- Kodai Tanaka (Albirex Nigata/Singapore), Japanese – 39 goals
- Christopher Nkunku (Leipzig/Germany), French – 37 goals
Despite being off the list of top ten goalscorers in 2022, Messi owns the highest scoring mark recorded in a year this century: 91 goals, in 2012.
The historic record holder? Pelé, who in 1959 scored 127 goals (some sources put 126), adding official and unofficial games.
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