Goalscoring defenders

HangTime

HangTime

HangTime

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Was showing my son some legendary players from my youth earlier (via Fifa Icons) and almost fell off the bean bag when I saw Koeman's stats.
  • 63 goals in 130 games for PSV was what initially piqued my interest.
  • 193 top flight league goals (more than Kluivert and only 11 less than Van Persie).
  • Scored 8+ goals every single season except his first when he didn't play many games (16 seasons in a row). He's in double figures for number of seasons with double figures of league goals, plenty of strikers haven't managed that.
Now, I know his stats were heavily bolstered by being on pens and freekicks a lot of the time, if you play for a top team in a league with not much competition you probably get loads of pens, but that's still some crazy numbers for a CB.

Everyone bums Ramos (another defender who takes a few pens) for his goalscoring exploits, but he's played more games than Koeman and isn't even close to scoring half as many goals.

What defenders leave you in awe of their goal scoring prowess?
 
Those that come to mind are Steve Bruce, scored a stupid amount in one season I recall, Mihajlovic who I just remember when Italian football was on Ch4, he was unreal on freekicks, scored a hattrick in one game of them. Then there's loads who took pens, you barely see a CB taking a pen nowadays.
 
Koeman scored more in his 3 seasons at PSV than JT did in his whole career, over 50 goals in under 100 league games :)
Bruce was one that did come to mind, but statistically he's way off the pace, only once in his entire career did he score over 8 league goals in a season, Koeman did it 13 times.

I remember Hierro used to get quite a few and the other thing I noticed looking at Fifa icons was Laurent Blanc had 77 goals for Montpellier at the start of his career, I never really recall him being a huge threat.

It's a shame you can't easily see stats excluding penalties cos it's kind of a bit unfair with the likes of RK, although I've seen it suggested he scored 99 pens. That means he still had over 100 non-pens.
 
HangTime said:
Koeman scored more in his 3 seasons at PSV than JT did in his whole career, over 50 goals in under 100 league games :)
Bruce was one that did come to mind, but statistically he's way off the pace, only once in his entire career did he score over 8 league goals in a season, Koeman did it 13 times.

I remember Hierro used to get quite a few and the other thing I noticed looking at Fifa icons was Laurent Blanc had 77 goals for Montpellier at the start of his career, I never really recall him being a huge threat.

It's a shame you can't easily see stats excluding penalties cos it's kind of a bit unfair with the likes of RK, although I've seen it suggested he scored 99 pens. That means he still had over 100 non-pens.
Click to expand...

Koeman scored 60 free kicks, I think it’s only worth discussing when you discount set pieces.
Tavenier the same, pretty much all pens and free kicks.
Bruce, Flint, Terry would have been all goals from corners/crosses.
 
Freekicks is an interesting one because unlike pens it's not that easy to score. The xG is very low in comparison, something like 6% for all direct free kicks and around double that for the top free kick takers. So you really have to earn it to score a lot of goals from freekicks.

Assuming the above stats are correct Koeman still has 80 club goals excluding pens and freekicks. Which is not bad for a CB under 6ft in height.
 
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