How do the likes of Mo Salah and Sadio Mane stack up against Didier Drogba and Emmanuel Adebayor?
(Image credit: Getty)
Mohamed Salah has been in red-hot goalscoring form this season, and heads into AFCON with 16 goals already this term. The Egyptian is widely regarded as one of the world's best finishers, but where does he rank in a list of the top-scoring Africans in Premier League history?
He faces stiff competition from the likes of Didier Drogba – who made a name for himself as the biggest of big game players at Chelsea – and Emanuel Adebayor, who scored across spells at Arsenal, Man City, Tottenham and Crystal Palace.
Here, we count down the top-scoring Africans in Premier League history.
5. Aiyegbeni Yakubu, Nigeria (95)
Yakubu celebrates scoring for Middlesbrough (Anna Gowthorpe/PA)
Yakubu made an immediate impact after joining Portsmouth in 2003, scoring 16 goals in his first season in the Premier League and reaching double figures five years in succession. After a loss of form with Everton, he bounced back with a career-high 17 Premier League goals for Blackburn in 2011/12.
Emmanuel Adebayor celebrates scoring for Manchester City against his former club Arsenal in 2009 (Nick Potts/PA)
Much-travelled and often controversial, the Togo international was nevertheless a reliable source of goals in his peak years – hitting 24 for Arsenal in 2007/08, 14 in his first season with Manchester City and 17 on loan at Spurs in 2011/12. A farewell season with Palace added a fourth club to his personal scoresheet.
3. Sadio Mane, Senegal (103)
Sadio Mane, right, and Salah have thrived together at Liverpool (Peter Byrne/PA)
Mane, 29, has reached double figures in every Premier League season since joining Southampton in 2014, peaking with 22 in that Golden Boot campaign, and is already en route to keeping that sequence going this term as well as bringing up his top-flight century. He, Salah, Roberto Firmino and latterly Diogo Jota have given Jurgen Klopp’s side a fearsome strikeforce.
2. Didier Drogba, Ivory Coast (104)
Didier Drogba celebrates Chelsea’s 2014-15 Premier League title win (Mike Egerton/PA)
Another two-time Golden Boot winner, with 20 goals in 2006/07 and his best Premier League return of 29 three years later, Drogba won four titles with the Blues as well as four FA Cups, three League Cups and the 2011/12 Champions League. He scored nine goals in nine cup finals and was voted the club’s greatest ever player in a 2012 poll by Chelsea magazine.
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1. Mohamed Salah, Egypt (113)
After a false start with Chelsea, Salah has established himself among the world’s elite with Liverpool. He has won two Premier League Golden Boots, with his 32 goals in 2017/18 a record for a 38-game season while the following season brought an all-African three-way tie with team-mate Sadio Mane and Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. He reached the record by becoming the first visiting player ever to score a Premier League hat-trick at Old Trafford, in late October.
Ed is a staff writer at FourFourTwo, working across the magazine and website. A German speaker, he’s been working as a football reporter in Berlin since 2015, predominantly covering the Bundesliga and Germany's national team. Favourite FFT features include an exclusive interview with Jude Bellingham following the youngster’s move to Borussia Dortmund in 2020, a history of the Berlin Derby since the fall of the Wall and a celebration of Kevin Keegan’s playing career.
