Real Madrid: Ranking the five best No. 9’s in club history

For every football team, a striker is one of the most important roles, and it’s difficult to imagine a team without a striker. It is the role every kid who dreams of becoming a footballer wants to play because strikers are the ones who have the responsibility to score goals. The main objective of a striker is to score goals and win the game for his team. And the one who scores the winning goal is often seen as the hero of the game.

Like any other club, Real Madrid has always looked forward to signing the best of strikers. And as a club with a rich history, the club has seen many great strikers wearing the royal white jersey and become legends of the club. So let’s have a look at the five best No. 9’s in the history of Real Madrid and look at some honorable mentions of players who don’t make the list.

Honorable mentions

Ruud Van Nistelrooy

Ruud Van Nistelrooy misses out from the main list, but he deserves an honorable mention, for his short but great career at Real Madrid. The Dutch international was signed for a fee of 14 million from Manchester United, in the summer of 2006. He was 30 back then and there was a striker like Ronaldo in the team, but van Nistelrooy still agreed to come to Madrid.

Due to Ronaldo’s injuries, van Nistelrooy got to start every LaLiga game, and he made his debut in a 0-0 draw against Villarreal. It didn’t take long for him to introduce himself, as he scored a hattrick in his second game against Levante. He scored 25 goals and won the Pichichi award for the 2006/07 season, as Real Madrid won LaLiga under Fabio Capello. Well, it was some start for the Dutch forward.

Ronaldo left Madrid, and he continued to be the club’s starter. He had a great second season at Madrid, as he led Real Madrid to the second league title in a row, and scored 20 goals in a season marred by injury. After two brilliant seasons, a lot was expected of him. But injuries curbed his third season as he played just 12 games and missed more than half of the season with a meniscus injury. He left the club in January 2010, with 64 goals and 16 assists to his name from 96 appearances.

Though he didn’t have a long career at Real Madrid, he left his mark and had some memorable moments. His goals looked simple to the eye, but the credit goes to Nistelrooy for making them look so simple. He was a perfect ‘poacher’, who knew how to be at the right place at the right time to score a goal. He was a perfect penalty taker as well, and people got used to seeing him stepping up confidently to take the penalties and smash them into the bottom corner.

The stint was short, but it had class written all over it.

Emilio Butragueno

The next player to get an honorable mention is the club’s current head of public relations, Emilio Butragueno. He was not exactly an out-and-out goalscorer, but he was a highly skillful footballer. He had excellent dribbling abilities and had a habit of scoring extraordinary goals. Butragueno is a La Fabrica graduate as well, and the Spanish international spent 12 years with the first team.

He made his first-team debut under Alfredo Di Stefano in 1984, as he went on to play 463 more games, scoring 171 goals for Los Blancos. He was a part of the ‘Quinta del Buitre’ which included Michel, Manolo Sanchis, Martin Vazquez, and Pardeza, and he formed a great attacking duo with one of the strikers who makes this list, Hugo Sanchez.

For everything, he had done for the club as a die-hard Madridista and is still doing as a member of Real Madrid’s board, he deserved an honorable mention. Few more honorable mentions include Fernando Morientes and Cristiano Ronaldo of 2016-18, who played as a center-forward in a 4-4-2 formation and was instrumental in winning 2 champions league titles.