Purple patches to rival Ronaldo
Cristiano Ronaldo is in the form of his life, having scored 21 times in his last 11 games, with 18 of those coming in his last nine league matches and three in the two Champions League ties against Paris Saint-Germain.
With Ronaldo's scintillating form in mind, we decided to leaf through football's back pages for other players who've had a phenomenal burst of scoring – the proverbial purple patch – bagging a dozen or more goals in short order. The list includes some surprise names and some of football’s greatest strikers – including CR7's old rival at Barcelona...
12. Bas Dost, 2014/15 (12 goals in seven games)
Netherlands international Dost was sensational in the second half of the 2014/15 Bundesliga season. Having found the net three times before the winter break, the Wolfsburg striker went on a run of 12 goals in just seven matches, starting with a couple of goals in a 4-1 win against Bayern Munich.
Dost failed to score against Frankfurt in Wolfsburg’s next fixture, but then helped himself to one against Hoffenheim, four against Bayer Leverkusen and two against each of Hertha Berlin and Werder Bremen in subsequent weeks. He’s bang-in-form for Sporting too, having scored more than a goal a game in the league since joining in the summer of 2016.
11. Owen Coyle, 1990/91 (12 goals in four games)
Long before he was patrolling Lancastrian technical areas in a pair of shorts and football boots, Coyle enjoyed a prolific career as a striker in Scotland’s lower divisions, scoring goals for the likes of Dumbarton and Clydebank before moving to Aidrieonians in 1990.
Shortly after signing for the Diamonds, he hit 12 goals in four matches with Forfar, Livingston, Ayr and Clyde on the receiving end of the striker’s sharpshooting.
His goals even earned him a call-up to play for the Republic of Ireland in 1994. After declaring he'd swim the Irish Sea to represent his parents' birth country, he played a whole seven minutes in a friendly against the Dutch.
10. Jamie Vardy, 2015/16 (13 in 11 straight games)
Leicester City astonished the Premier League for the entirety of the 2015/16 campaign, in no small part due to the goalscoring form of their striker Jamie Vardy. When he broke the Premier League record for scoring in most matches consecutively, it was just another bizarrely brilliant moment in an unforgettable season for Foxes supporters.
Vardy kicked off his 13-game streak with a late penalty at Bournemouth on August 29, then struck 12 goals across his next 10 matches ;– concluding with a trademark effort against Manchester United at the King Power Stadium on November 28.
9. Gabriel Batistuta, 1994/95 (13 in 11 straight games)
They didn’t call him Batigol for nothing. The all-time record goalscorer for the Argentinian national team was lethal at club level with Boca Juniors, Roma and Qatari side Al-Arabi but particularly so during his nine-year association with Fiorentina between 1991 and 2000.
An 80th-minute winner against Cagliari on the opening day of 1994/95 was the start of a tremendous 11-match goalscoring run for Batistuta, who was playing in a rather ordinary Fiorentina side that would go on to finish the Serie A season in 10th place. Batistuta's manager that season? One Claudio Ranieri.
8. Robert Lewandowski, 2015/16 (14 goals in five games)
Lewandowski notched three goals in three games at the start of the 2015/16 season, scoring in successive matches against Nottingen in the cup and Hamburg and Hoffenheim in the league ahead of the international break.
He continued his run with goals for Poland against Gibraltar and Germany and found the net upon his return to club football against Augsburg, but it turned out that he was only just warming up.
A stunning five-goal haul against Wolfsburg – as a half-time substitute – paved the way for a ridiculous spree of 14 in his next five, including two against Mainz (BL), three against Dinamo Zagreb (CL), a brace at home to Borussia Dortmund (BL) and another pair in Scotland (EQ). Then he headed in another against Ireland in his next fixture. Later in the season, Lewa hit four braces in five matches across January and March.
7. Cristiano Ronaldo, 2013/14 (15 in eight games)
No surprise that Ronaldo features here given the fact that he’s Real Madrid’s greatest ever goalscorer, has scored the most goals in UEFA competition history and is the only player to score 15 goals in two Champions League seasons. His form at the moment – 21 goals in his last 11 matches – is every bit as impressive as his haul of 15 goals in eight games for club and country in 2013/14.
The run started with a hat-trick against Sevilla in October 2013, before a brace against Rayo Vallecano, goal against Juventus in the Champions League and hat-trick in a 5-1 thrashing of Real Sociedad.
The international break offered no respite for the world’s defenders: the Portuguese thumped four goals in two games against Sweden to virtually single-handedly book his country’s place at the 2014 World Cup. Buoyed by his efforts, the former Manchester United man returned to Spain and scored less than two minutes into Madrid’s clash with Almeria.
6. Luis Suarez, 2013/14 (16 goals in nine games)
Suspended for the first few games of the 2013/14 season for trying to eat Branislav Ivanovic the previous April, Suarez was clearly champing at the bit to get cracking.
He marked his return with a couple of strikes against Sunderland at the end of September. Then, the floodgates opened: Suarez notched a hat-trick against West Brom, two more against Fulham, just one against Everton which he made up for by scoring four against Norwich, two more against West Ham followed by a couple versus Tottenham and two more still against Cardiff. Chew on that.
5. Masashi Nakayama, 1998 (16 goals in four games)
Possibly the least-known of the players on this list boasts probably the most intensive purple patch of the lot. While spending a whopping 19 years with Jubilo Iwata in the J League, Japan international Nakayama scored the Samurai Blue’s first ever World Cup goal, a consolation in a 2-1 defeat to Jamaica at the Stade Gerland in 1998.
Ahead of that World Cup, Nakayama managed an extraordinary 16 goals in four games for Jubilo, helping his side top their first-stage table. They eventually lost to Kashima Antlers in the Championship Play-Off – with Nakayama scoring in the first leg.
4. William Dean, 1927/28 (17 goals in nine games)
Not so much a purple patch as a purple season for Dean, who scored a barely credible 60 league goals in 39 appearances. He started as he meant to go on with 17 strikes in Everton’s opening nine games of the season, a tally that made him responsible for 65% of his team’s strikes up to that point.
The previous year, Middlesbrough had romped to the Second Division title thanks largely to George Camsell's record-setting 59-goal haul. Dean had a personal target to aim for, as Everton closed in on the title, but with nine games to go he had "only" scored 43. Even scoring 10 in the next seven games gave him a tall order: bag seven in two. He scored four at Burnley as a 5-3 win kept the Toffees top, and in the final game – at home to Arsenal – he completed his hat-trick to beat the record and win the league.
3. Mario Jardel, 1999/00 (18 goals in nine games)
Jardel is mostly remembered in England for a poor spell with Bolton Wanderers in 2003, but the Brazilian’s incredible goalscoring record at former clubs Porto (166 in 169), Galatasaray (34 in 43) and Sporting (67 in 62) shouldn't be forgotten.
The 1999/2000 season was Jardel at his free-scoring best, including a spell of nine matches in which he scored a staggering 18 times for Porto. That purple patch is almost as astonishing as how he was able to play for the Trotters for six months without scoring a single league goal.
2. Gerd Muller, 1969/70 (23 in 16 straight games)
Muller wasn’t big or strong, nor was he technically superior. In fact, explosive pace over short distances aside, he didn’t really excel in any aspect of the game apart from the most important one for a striker – scoring goals, which he did with frightening regularity for club and country. He scored an extraordinary 68 goals in 62 caps for West Germany.
Playing for his club side Bayern Munich in 1969/70, Muller scored in 16 consecutive matches between September and March, a run which included a four-goal haul against Werder Bremen.
Muller’s net-busting form still wasn’t enough to propel the Bavarians to the Bundesliga title, though, with Borussia Monchengladbach finishing four points above runners-up Bayern.
1. Lionel Messi, 2012/13 (33 in 21 straight games)
As with Cristiano Ronaldo, the only way Messi would surprise would be if he wasn’t on this list. He has made a mockery of the old ‘one-in-two’ yardstick by which strikers used to be judged and has made even the most powerful superlatives appear meaningless. But even for his exceptional standards, netting in 21 straight La Liga games in 2012/13 raised that high bar out of sight.
It all started with a brace in Barcelona’s 4-2 win over Mallorca in November and didn’t end until the Argentine dribble king drew a blank against Atletico Madrid on the final day of the season in May. He finished the La Liga campaign with an incredible 46 league goals, having plundered 33 in a magnificent six-month spell. Ridiculous.
