Gerd Müller in the context of "1974 FIFA World Cup final"

A total of 946 goals have been scored in games at the men's 17 final tournaments of the UEFA European Championship, not counting penalties scored during shoot-outs. Since the first goal scored by Yugoslav player Milan Galić at the 1960 European Nations' Cup, exactly 545 footballers have scored goals at the Euro tournaments, of whom 39 have scored four or more.

Since in the beginning tournaments were contested between four teams and only two games were played, top goalscorers of the first three editions have scored only two goals. This was bettered in 1972, when West Germany's Gerd Müller scored four goals. Four years later this was matched by his compatriot Dieter Müller and finally in 1984 France's Michel Platini have scored record 9 goals in just 5 games. His record stood for more than three decades until Cristiano Ronaldo scored his 10th goal for Portugal at the UEFA Euro 2020. He has later improved his tally and stands at 14 goals in 30 appearances at the European Championship tournaments — also record. The top 39 goalscorers have represented 15 nations, with 7 players scoring for Germany or West Germany, 5 for France, and 4 for Netherlands. In total, only 6 of them have scored at tournaments with maximum of 8 teams (prior to UEFA Euro 1996).

In top-level association football competitions, 26 players have scored 500 or more goals in both club and international football, according to research by the IFFHS, first published in 2007. Taking into account competitions of all levels, 82 players have reached the milestone, according to the RSSSF. FIFA, the international governing body of football, has never released a list detailing the highest goalscorers and does not keep official records. It is challenging for statisticians and media to agree on which goals should be counted, with debate over whether to include those scored in friendlies, regional competitions, and even matches taking place during wartime. Hungarian Imre Schlosser is generally recognised as the first to reach the 500-goal mark, doing so in 1927 shortly before his retirement. Nine players have accomplished the feat at a single club: Josef Bican (Slavia Prague), Jimmy Jones (Glenavon), Jimmy McGrory (Celtic), Joe Bambrick (Linfield), Lionel Messi (Barcelona), Gerd Müller (Bayern Munich), Pelé (Santos), Fernando Peyroteo (Sporting CP), and Uwe Seeler (Hamburg). Of these nine, Messi scored the most, with 672 goals between his debut in 2004 and his departure in 2021.

In 2020, FIFA recognised Josef Bican, an Austrian-Czech dual international who played between the 1930s and the 1950s, as the record scorer with an estimated 805 goals, although CNN, the BBC, France 24, and O Jogo all acknowledge that Bican's tally includes goals scored for reserve teams and in unofficial international matches. UEFA, the governing body for European football, ranks him as the leading all-time goalscorer in European top-flight leagues with 518 goals, narrowly ahead of Hungarian Ferenc Puskás. RSSSF credits Bican with 948 goals, a tally which includes goals scored in winter tournaments, as well as when selected to represent regional and city teams, and the Football Association of the Czech Republic claims a total of 821. Spanish newspapers Marca and Sport state that both Bican and Pelé scored 762 goals. Bican once walked out of a gala held in his honour by the IFFHS after the organisation had excluded war-time goals from his tally, although it later recognised the 229 goals he had scored during the period.

Gerd Müller was a German professional footballer who represented the West Germany national football team as a striker between 1966 and 1974. He scored his first international goal on 8 April 1967, when he netted four goals in a UEFA Euro 1968 qualifier against Albania. Since then, Müller become his country's all-time top scorer with 68 goals in 62 games until being overtaken by Miroslav Klose on 6 June 2014. He held the record for goals scored in FIFA World Cup tournaments between 1974 and 2006. This record was bettered in 2006 by Brazil's Ronaldo, and eight years later by fellow countryman Klose.

Müller netted eight international hat-tricks, which is a national record and the third-best in Europe, behind Sweden's Sven Rydell with nine and Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo with ten. On half of those occasions he added a fourth goal in the same match, against Albania, Cyprus, the Soviet Union and Switzerland. This tally includes back-to-back hat-tricks at the 1970 FIFA World Cup against Bulgaria and Peru, being the only player alongside Sándor Kocsis to have done so.

Since the Bundesliga's introduction at the beginning of the 1963–64 season, a total of 55 players have scored 100 or more goals in the competition. The most successful goalscorer is Gerd Müller, becoming the first player to score 100 Bundesliga goals in the 1969–70 season, finishing his career with 365 goals. Robert Lewandowski is the fastest foreign player to reach 100 goals. With the exception of Aílton, each of the players listed represented their national team at least once.

Gerd Müller has been the Bundesliga's top scorer since 1970. Previous record scorers were Lothar Emmerich (1966–70), Timo Konietzka (1965–66) and Uwe Seeler (1964–65).