5 African footballers with the most goals in Premier League history
The Premier League saw Mohamed Salah go on a rampage during Liverpool's game against Manchester United at Old Trafford last weekend. The Egyptian scored a thrilling hat-trick to silence the Red Devils on their home turf.
Salah is the perfect example of how far African players have come in football and some of the best players in the football world come from there now. The Premier League also has some fine African players and it is only a blessing to have the best of them play in such a high-quality league.
Premier League is used to high-scoring African players
In the history of the Premier League, there have been some iconic African players who have enhanced the quality of football. Yaya Toure, Michael Essien, John Obi Mikel, Kolo Toure and many others have graced the league in the past with their amazing talents.
Many of the African players have been quite effective in front of goal and scored a significant amount of goals in the history of the Premier League. On that note, let's take a look at the top goal-scoring African players in the league:
#5 Ayegbeni Yakubu (95 goals)
With some impressive performances while playing for Maccabi Haifa, Ayegbeni Yakubu earned a move to the Premier League, joining Portsmouth initially on loan in 2003. He took his opportunity well and scored 16 goals in the league in his very first season before making the move permanent.
His superb spell with Portsmouth continued for the second season following which he signed for Middlesbrough. In his two seasons with Boro, Yakubu scored 25 goals in 71 Premier League appearances. In 2007, the Nigerian joined Everton and went on to play four seasons for the Toffees.
Only two African players have scored 4+ Premier League hat-tricks:
🇳🇬 Yakubu 🎩🎩🎩🎩
🇪🇬 Mohamed Salah 🎩🎩🎩🎩
Mo has another record in his sights. 🌍 https://t.co/nFEn41MS6u
Yakubu then went on to join Leicester City in the Championship and after a season returned to the Premier League to play for Blackburn. In his 252 league appearances, the striker scored 95 goals.
#4 Emmanuel Adebayor (97 goals)
Emmanuel Adebayor is a well-known name in the Premier League, though not always for the best of reasons. The Togolese signed for Arsenal from Monaco in 2006 and was touted to replicate Nwankwo Kanu.
Then Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger highly rated the tall striker. Adebayor did have a good spell with the Gunners in the Premier League, scoring 46 goals in 104 appearances. In the 2007-08 season, he went on to score 24 goals in the league, which helped him win the 2008 African Player of the Year award.
An Adebayor snapshot was enough for all three points #OnThisDay in 2009! 📆
🔵 #mancity https://t.co/PgBrVjdmBK
He then joined Manchester City in 2009 but played with them for hardly two seasons. After a loan move to Real Madrid, Adebayor joined Tottenham Hotspur in 2011. This move certainly did not go down well with the Arsenal fanbase. He played four seasons with Spurs and then a season with Crystal Palace. In his 242 Premier League appearances, Adebayor scored 97 goals.