#2 Germany
Germany have been Europe’s most successful football team in the world arena. The European powerhouses have been the most consistent performer at FIFA World Cups. With four World Cup titles, they are joint second with Italy for the most number of titles.
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Germany’s football may not seem very artistic but it is fluent and very effective. The Germans play football in a very methodical manner and their style is as efficient as their heavy engineering. The Germans are known to combine well as a team whenever they turnout at major competitions. The Germans play an attacking style of football building attack from the flanks and are very good at counter-attacking.
The Germans have been blessed with some world class strikers all through their footballing history. Germany had a goal-scoring machine in the legendary striker Gerd Muller who scored goals at an exceptional strike rate. The ‘Bomber’ was the highest goal scorer in the 1970 World Cup. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge was their standout striker in the 80s.
In the 90s, they had talismanic strikers in Rudi Voller and Jurgen Klinsmann who were prolific goal scorers at major tournaments. Besides Klinsmann, Germany had Oliver Bierhoff, Kevin Kuranyi and Ulf Kristen.
The turn of the millennium saw Miroslav Klose taking centre stage and scoring goals at four successive World Cups. Klose became the highest ever scorer in FIFA World Cup history with 16 goals. Klose had a good support cast in Mario Gomez, Thomas Muller, Lucas Podolski and André Schürrle all of whom proved their mettle by striking goals consistently.
The Germans always had attacking midfielders with an eye for goal. The likes of Lothar Matthaus, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Michael Ballack, Mesut Ozil, Toni Kroos and Mario Goetze have all created many goals for the German strikers and found the back of the net themselves
Leading Goalscorers for Germany
Miroslav Klose 71
Gerd Muller 68
Lucas Podolski 49
Jurgen Klinsmann 47
Rudi Voller 47
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge 45
Uwe Seller 43
Michael Ballack 42
Thomas Muller 38
Oliver Bierhoff 37
Fritz Walter 34
Klaus Fischer 32
Mario Gomez 31
Andreas Möller 31
Ulf Kristen 21
