Top Müller

At the time of writing Miroslav Klose is the joint top scorer of World Cup goals. The player with the next highest tally active in international football is Klose’s teammate Thomas Müller, who has an impressive nine World Cup goals at the age of just 24. If the young forward carries on scoring at his current rate of one goal per game he has a great chance of becoming the World Cup’s all time top scorer at the 2018 tournament, provided Germany make decent progress in Brazil and Russia, and Klose doesn’t move the record further away.

Germany has a rich history of goalscorers to achieve impressive totals at football’s greatest competition but Thomas Müller could better them all thanks in large part to having started so young. He was only 20 years old when he won the Golden Boot in South Africa. This graph charts the ages that the players of Germany and West Germany with at least seven World Cup goals have notched them up. Ronaldo, the other joint holder of the record, is included for good measure.