In football, you get few better chances to score than a penalty – but you still have to have the right player standing over it.
Taking in legends of yesteryear and current stars alike, we count down the finest spot-kick exponents the game has ever seen – plenty of whom are renowned for their distinctive techniques from the spot (none more so than that man above).
Let's get straight down to business shall we...?
West Ham legend Ray Stewart took 86 penalties in his 11 seasons with the Hammers – and scored 76 of them.
A specialist from 12 yards out, the ex-Scotland defender’s personal tally might differ from the official record: “I don’t count them,” he once said of missed penalties after which he scored from the rebound. Hmm…
The ultimate goalscoring goalkeeper, Brazilian icon Rogerio Ceni found the net well over 100 times during his long career.
A free-kick and penalty expert, he was his Sao Paulo’s first-choice taker for 18 years and notched the decisive goal from the spot in the semi-finals of the 2005 Club World Cup – a tournament he helped his side win by beating Liverpool in the final.
Widely regarded as Finland’s best player of all time, Jari Litmanen tucked away plenty of penalties in his hugely successful career.
Aptly, the European Cup-winning Ajax great did exactly that in what proved to be his final international appearance – against San Marino in 2010 – at the ripe old age of 39, setting a new record as the oldest goalscorer in Euros qualifying history.
Among the best midfielders of his generation, Michael Ballack regularly kept his cool on penalties.
He didn’t take as many as he might have done – owing to spending four years in the same Chelsea team as Frank Lampard – but the German only ever failed a handful of times when stepping up to the spot.
An outrageously composed penalty taker, Ivan Toney admits that he waits “until the last split second” to decide where to put his spot-kick.
The striker converted 28 of his first 30 career penalties, sticking to his astonishing no-look technique (well, he looks at the goalkeeper – that’s the point) to score in England’s Euro 2024 quarter-final shootout win over Switzerland.
One of the game’s great one-club men, Il Capitano Francesco Totti spent 25 seasons with hometown club Roma, winning the 2000/01 Scudetto and scoring 307 goals.
A good chunk of those were penalties, and the 2006 World Cup-winning Italian set a Serie A record by dispatching 71 in the competition between 1993 and 2017.
Undoubtedly one of the greatest strikers of all time, Zlatan Ibrahimovic made a habit of scoring spectacular goals.
Unsurprisingly, though, the giant Swede was also a dependable penalty taker, scoring the best part of 100 spot-kicks over the course of his trophy-laden career, tending to favour the low and hard approach.
Liverpool’s captain fantastic for many years, Steven Gerrard led by example for his boyhood club.
That included taking penalties – which he usually buried low and hard, dispatching a Reds-record 47 throughout his career. “You pick your spot, don’t change your mind on the run-up, make sure you get really good contact on the ball and try to be as accurate as you can,” he said. Simple!
Eighties and nineties Liverpool legend Jan Molby scored 61 goals for the Reds – the majority of which came from 12 yards out.
Probably the most accurate spot-kick taker in the Merseyside giants’ history, the Danish midfield maestro took 45 penalties for the club and only ever missed three (all well-saved).
A surprise inclusion perhaps, given his tendency to, er, get distracted, Mario Balotelli actually has an excellent record from the penalty spot.
The former Inter, Manchester City and Milan frontman didn’t miss any of the first 26 penalties he took as a professional – including one for Italy at the 2013 Confederations Cup which made him the second-youngest player to 10 Azzurri goals.
Among the finest players in the world during the 70s, Paul Breitner scored exactly a third of his Bundesliga goals from 12 yards out.
The versatile midfielder’s most significant penalty, however, came in the 1974 World Cup final: the equaliser as West Germany came from behind to defeat the Netherlands.
Frank Lampard didn’t become Chelsea’s record goalscorer without netting a fair few times from the spot over the years.
The Premier League’s top-scoring midfielder by some distance, Lampard dispatched 43 out of 50 penalties in the competition. He underscored his cool in such situations by converting after not one but two retakes in a game at West Ham in 2009.
An unusually high-scoring defender, Graham Alexander put penalties away with aplomb for Preston North End, Burnley and more.
The 40-cap Scotland international racked up well over 100 career goals. Emphatically taken spot-kicks accounted for 77 of them – and he rarely ever failed to convert, admitting that he thrived under such pressure .
A true great of the Italian and world game, Alessandro Del Piero amassed his fair share of goals from the spot.
The 2006 World Cup winner and Juventus legend scored more than 70 penalties over the course of his career, exhibiting the same dead-ball expertise which made him such a threat from free-kicks too.
He doesn’t always add the hop just as he’s about to strike the ball, but Bruno Fernandes does have one of the more distinctive, penalty-taking techniques around.
The Portuguese playmaker shuffles up to the spot, keeping the goalkeeper guessing until the last moment, and tends to score. He became Manchester United’s all-time leading penalty scorer by dispatching his 29th for the Red Devils against Everton in March 2024.
Croatia great Davor Suker fired his country to the semi-finals of their debut World Cup in 1998 – and won the Golden Boot in doing so.
The ex-Real Madrid marksman only missed a couple of penalties, claiming he lost track of how many he actually scored , the most important being the only goal of the game against Romania in the last 16 of France 98 – from a retaken kick, no less.
Poland’s ever-clinical record goalscorer and unquestionably one of the finest strikers in history, it’s only natural that Robert Lewandowski has converted more than his fair share of penalties.
Dependable from the spot for club and country alike, Lewandowski once held the record for the longest penalty-scoring streak in the Champions League – dispatching each of his first 14 kicks in the competition.
You have to pull off a pretty special move to have it named after you – and Antonin Panenka really did.
The world had never seen the like of the moustachioed midfielder’s audacious chipped effort to seal Euro 1976 glory for Czechoslovakia in a shootout against West Germany. That alone would justify such a high ranking, but he dispatched plenty more spot-kicks besides.
Scorer of well over 100 penalties – converting the majority of them – Lionel Messi is often the man for high-pressure situations (no surprises there).
The GOAT scored four out of four from the spot in captaining Argentina to victory at the 2022 World Cup – plus two out of two in shootouts, the first kick against the Netherlands in the last eight and France in the final.
Spain’s premier striker of the late 2000s and early 2010s, David Villa scored his final career goal from the spot – for Japanese side Vissel Kobe.
It was fitting, given the World Cup and Euros winner’s penalty record. He converted 31 out of 33 throughout his LaLiga career and bagged some big ones for his country.
Alan Shearer would have become the Premier League’s all-time leading marksmen without scoring any penalties – but his 56 spot-kick goals, the most in the history of the competition, gave him breathing room at the top of the list.
The Newcastle legend loved to smash them in from 12 yards and his final career goal came in exactly that form – extra aptly, against Newcastle’s arch-rivals Sunderland.
A quite exceptional midfielder who captained West Germany to 1990 World Cup glory and amassed 150 caps for his country overall, Lothar Matthaus rarely missed from the spot.
The Bayern Munich favourite dispatched 27 out of 30 in the Bundesliga – where he also played for Borussia Monchengladbach – and plenty more in other competitions, including the winner in the Italia ’90 quarter-final against Czechoslovakia.
Probably the greatest penalty taker of his generation, Harry Kane honed his technique to hammer the ball low and hard into the side netting, just inside the post.
When he executes it correctly – as he almost always does – Tottenham and England’s record goalscorer leaves even the best goalkeepers around with no chance.
Roberto Baggio’s skied spot-kick at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena handed the 1994 World Cup to Brazil – but that unfortunately iconic penalty was one of a handful the Italian icon ever missed.
‘The Divine Ponytail’ registered triple figures from 12 yards overall, ranking among the leading penalty scorers in Serie A history and converting in a number of shootouts for the Azzurri.
Right up there with the very best players on the planet during the 80s, there wasn’t much three-time back-to-back Ballon d’Or winner Michel Platini couldn’t do.
An exceptionally cool head from 12 yards, France’s Euro 1984-winning skipper scored every penalty he took in his homeland – and the majority of those he took abroad.
We came to expect two things from a Cristiano Ronaldo penalty: power and placement (and, well, a goal).
They might be the two most basic elements of taking a spot-kick, but the enduring Portuguese icon applied them to stunning effect throughout his career, racking up the best part of 200 for club and country.
Are you surprised that the late, inimitably great Diego Maradona was one of the greatest penalty takers ever? We’re certainly not.
The pint-sized Argentinian genius dispatched 90 out of 109 spot-kicks in all, favouring the left-hand side of the goal – a natural choice for the finest left-footed player in history – and only reducing his conversion rate with an uncharacteristic string of misses for Boca Juniors very late in his career.
The ‘original’, Brazilian Ronaldo was even better from 12 yards than his Portuguese namesake, hanging up his boots with a conversion rate of around 90%.
R9 scored the only goal of the 1997 Cup Winners’ Cup final with a penalty for Barcelona and hit a hat-trick of spot-kicks for Brazil in a 2006 World Cup qualifying victory over arch-rivals Argentina.
If not for injury forcing him to retire aged just 28, the sensational Marco van Basten might well have gone down as the greatest centre-forward of all time.
The devastatingly clinical Dutchman was as dangerous from penalties as he was from open play, converting more than 90% of the 50+ spot-kicks he took during his cruelly truncated career.
The ultimate goalscoring defender, Barcelona and Netherlands great Ronald Koeman found the net more than 250 times for club and country.
A near-infallible penalty taker, Koeman would charge towards the ball like a man possessed yet deftly tap it in – and he only ever missed six spot-kicks out of 103 attempted.
Matt Le Tissier famously missed just once from the spot, dispatching 47 of the 48 penalties he took.
Nicknamed ‘Le God’ by his adoring Southampton fans, the great Premier League entertainer’s only failure came against Nottingham Forest in 1993, with goalkeeper Mark Crossley describing his save as the best he ever made – that’s how formidable Le Tissier was from 12 yards.
Among the finest Mexican footballers ever to grace the pitch, Cuauhtemoc Blanco was in his element when placing the ball on the penalty spot.
The 119-cap forward stepped up from 12 yards 73 times over the course of his career; incredibly, he missed just twice. He must have nerves of titanium, never mind steel.
