Best Penalty Takers in the World
Who is the best penalty taker in the world? Who has taken and scored the most? The database below answers both, with career penalty records for the leading takers across Europe’s top leagues.
The table is sorted by penalties scored by default. Click any column heading to reorder it, filter by how many a player has taken, or search for someone specific.
Who is the best penalty taker in the world?
It depends how much you weigh volume against accuracy. Set the bar at ten penalties scored and someone with a perfect record wins; at thirty and fifty, different players do. All three are defensible answers, so here are all three.
The rate falls at every step, and that is the finding rather than a flaw in the data. A perfect record is achievable over ten penalties; nobody has managed it over fifty. Sustaining a high conversion across a career is a different and much harder thing than a good run.
The thresholds count penalties scored rather than taken. Counting attempts would let a player who has taken forty and missed twenty into the same ranking as one who has converted forty, which is not a comparison worth making.
Penalty Conversion Rate by Player
Data from Transfermarkt. Totals cover club and international penalties, including international friendlies, but exclude club friendlies and penalty shootouts. Last updated 15 August 2026. Records are checked on a rolling basis, so some will be more current than others. Players marked retired have stopped playing, so their totals will not change again.
Which player has the best penalty conversion rate?
Plenty of players have a perfect record. Very few have taken enough for it to mean anything — a 100% record from two penalties tells you nothing.
Of players who have taken 10 or more, only 2 have never missed:
A perfect record is not the same as being a club’s first choice, though. Several of these players sit behind someone else in the order, which is why our Premier League penalty takers page is the better guide to who will actually step up on Saturday.
What counts as a good conversion rate?
Around 80% is the benchmark. That is roughly the Premier League average across a season, and a regular taker converting below it is costing his side goals rather than adding them.
Above 85% is genuinely elite over a meaningful sample, and the handful of players clearing 90% across twenty or more attempts are the ones worth building a fantasy side around. Every penalty is around four points before bonus — a taker converting eight a season at 90% rather than 70% is worth roughly seven extra points a year on that alone.
Sample size is the thing to watch. The table only ranks conversion for players with 10 or more attempts, and anyone below that is shown in grey. It is the difference between a record and a run of luck.
More penalty data
For who takes them right now rather than who has taken them historically, see our Premier League penalty takers page, which lists every club’s order along with each taker’s price, ownership and chance of starting.
Penalties are also built into our FPL points predictor and our goalscorer odds, both updated before every gameweek.