Top 5 highest-scoring active players in international football
While club football might be where most of the attention and financial rewards lie, in the eyes of many footballers, representing their country signifies the highest achievements of their careers.
There is a certain level of pride that comes with donning a jersey to represent millions of your compatriots and for 90 minutes or more, the players act as global ambassadors for their countries, projecting it positively or otherwise to a global audience.
It is for this reason that a lot of players step up their performance levels while on national duties and go out of their way to achieve glory on the international scene.
The occasional nature of international fixtures mean that matches are not as frequent as those at club level, hence, there are fewer national team matches over the course of a player's career and each cap won is held in high esteem.
Some truly great footballers of the past like Pele, Ali Daei, Ferenc Puskas among others laid a mark on the international scene and are among the standard-bearers for international forwards to look up to.
With another international break upon us, we shall be having a rundown of the top five highest-scoring active footballers on the international scene.
Honourable mentions: Edin Dzeko (58 goals), Luis Suarez (58 goals)
Note: Goals and caps correct at the time of writing
#5 Robert Lewandowski: Poland (60 goals)
Robert Lewandowski has been one of the most consistent strikers in the last decade and he has a genuine claim to being considered the best centre-forward's of his generation.
The 32-year-old arrived in mainstream Europe when he signed for Borussia Dortmund in 2010 after finishing as the Polish League top scorer and he has grown from strength to strength since then.
He is a perennial winner of the Bundesliga Golden Boot, having won the accolade on four occasions and he has gone some way to making it five in total and three consecutively - scoring in every game so far this season.
Lewandowski has scored at least 40 goals in all competitions in each of the last four seasons and he has a trophy cabinet to match his immense talent in front of goal.
On the international scene, the former Lech Poznan man is unsurprisingly his country's all-time top scorer with 60 goals from 110 matches and he has captained his side through what has been a renaissance period.
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