Assist and finish
Dynamic duos
Who set up whom? The pairs of team-mates with the most assisted goals for their national team.
- Goals in matches between A teams
- 97,909
- Goals with a recorded assist
- 27,829
- of goals with a known assister
- 28 %
- Different assister–scorer pairs
- 22,967
The top 30 duos
Goals the scorer scored from the assister’s pass. Share = part of all the scorer’s goals for the team.
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Playmakers
Players who set up goals for the most different team-mates.
| # | Assist | Team | Scorers | Assists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Neymar2011–2023 |  Brazil | 33 | 59 |
| 2 | Lionel Messi2006–2026 |  Argentina | 29 | 67 |
| 3 | Christian Eriksen2010–2026 |  Denmark | 24 | 33 |
| 4 | Memphis Depay2014–2026 |  Netherlands | 23 | 39 |
| 5 | Kylian Mbappé2017–2026 |  France | 22 | 41 |
| 6 | Mohamed Salah2012–2026 |  Egypt | 22 | 36 |
| 7 | James Rodríguez2012–2026 |  Colombia | 21 | 40 |
| 8 | Eden Hazard2009–2022 |  Belgium | 21 | 37 |
| 9 | Thomas Müller2010–2024 |  Germany | 20 | 42 |
| 10 | Mesut Özil2009–2017 | Germany | 20 | 40 |
Two-way duos
Pairs who set up each other. In brackets: goals of the second player assisted by the first / the other way round.
| # | Duo | Team | Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Almoez Ali Abdulla ⇄ Akram Hassan Afif2017–2024 |  Qatar | 25(8/17) |
| 2 | Dušan Tadić ⇄ Aleksandar Mitrović2016–2023 |  Serbia | 21(19/2) |
| 3 | Sardar Azmoun ⇄ Mehdi Taremi2015–2025 |  Iran | 20(10/10) |
| 4 | Romelu Lukaku ⇄ Kevin De Bruyne2014–2025 | Belgium | 20(4/16) |
| 5 | Lionel Messi ⇄ Gonzalo Higuaín2010–2016 | Argentina | 18(11/7) |
| 6 | Miroslav Klose ⇄ Lukas Podolski2005–2014 | Germany | 17(11/6) |
| 7 | Alexis Sánchez ⇄ Eduardo Vargas2011–2019 |  Chile | 16(13/3) |
| 8 | Lionel Messi ⇄ Sergio Agüero2008–2021 | Argentina | 15(8/7) |
| 9 | Edin Džeko ⇄ Miralem Pjanić2009–2022 |  Bosnia & Herzegovina | 15(5/10) |
| 10 | Raheem Sterling ⇄ Harry Kane2015–2022 |  England | 15(10/5) |
How it's counted
Counted from the goal events (own goals excluded) of played matches between the A teams of different countries. The assisting player is only recorded for about a quarter of all goals, mostly in recent decades, so all numbers are lower bounds and older duos are under-represented.