La Liga has at times been the pinnacle of world football and has housed some of the best strikers ever to play the game. Being the leading goalscorer in Spain's top flight is often the sign of a top striker, especially in the past couple of decades.
For many years, the Spanish top flight was the home of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo who completely altered what the modern game expects from a goalscorer, meaning anyone who pops up among their names has done extremely well.
Here is a full list of every player to ever finish as the top scorer in La Liga and win the Pichichi Trophy in the process.
When did La Liga start recording top scorers?
Top scorers in the Spanish top flight have been recorded every year since 1929, but the award only became known as the Pichichi Trophy from the 1952/53 season onwards. The award is presented by the Spanish newspaper Marca.
The newspaper named every player who was a top scorer before the award began as winners too. It is named after Athletic Club striker Rafael 'Pichichi' Moreno.
Every La Liga top scorer ever
Some of the biggest names ever to play the game have been top scorers in La Liga such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Karim Benzema, Alfredo Di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas, Ronaldo and Raul.
Below is a list of every player to have ever won the Pichichi Trophy. There was a small gap with no records in the 1930s.
Who has been La Liga top scorer most often?
Need you ask? Lionel Messi is of course the player who has been named as top scorer in La Liga more than anyone else. The Argentine magician has won the award an incredible eight times, with five of them coming in a row before he departed for Paris Saint-Germain.
Cristiano Ronaldo managed to finish top on three occasions, while Hugo Sanchez, Quini and Alfredo Di Stefano all won the award five times. The second most successful player was Athletic Club's Telma Zarra who was the top scorer six times.
Who is the all-time La Liga top scorer?
There's going to be a theme to these sections. Lionel Messi is also the all-time La Liga top goalscorer and it's very hard to envisage a time when that is not the case.
The World Cup winner has got 474 La Liga goals to his name, meaning he holds the record by an incredible margin. Cristiano Ronaldo is second with 311, and the top five is rounded out by Telma Zarra, Karim Benzema and Hugo Sanchez.
Who has the most goals in one La Liga season?
Yeah, it's him again. Nobody has scored more goals in a La Liga season than Lionel Messi. In the 2011/12 campaign, Messi scored a ridiculous 50 league goals.
The scoring figures for each winner were more or less what you would expect over the years, anywhere between roughly 17 and 35 goals.
Then Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo arrived.
The Portuguese forward got 40 in 2010/11, which Messi responded to with 50. The figures between then and 2019/20 were 46, 31, 48, 40, 37, 34 and 36.
The 40 belongs to Luis Suarez which was an incredible achievement considering what the Uruguayan was up against, but the figures show the way in which Messi and Ronaldo changed the game when it comes to goalscoring.
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This article was originally published on 90min as La Liga Pichichi Trophy: History & all previous winners.