Son Heung-min scored his 100th Premier League goal as Tottenham beat Brighton 2-1 on Saturday.
Here, Football Mad looks at the league’s ‘century club’ and its newest member.
Century Club
Sonny 💯 pic.twitter.com/aLdoncj2j4
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) April 8, 2023
Son is the 34th player to reach 100 Premier League goals, and the first this season after Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane, Raheem Sterling and Cristiano Ronaldo all did so last term.
Alan Shearer, still the Premier League’s record scorer with 260 goals, was quickest to a century in 124 games and is also the only man to achieve the feat with two different clubs, Blackburn and Newcastle.
Son’s team-mate Harry Kane was next quickest in 141 games, with the pair forming one of the league’s deadliest ever strike forces and setting up goals for each other on 45 occasions – with Kane creating 23 of the South Korea star’s century.
Sergio Aguero (147), Thierry Henry (160) and Salah (162) complete the top five.
Son has reached his century in 260 appearances, ranking 25th out of the 34 players, just behind Nicolas Anelka (258) and ahead of Dion Dublin (271). This season’s first single-figure haul (so far) since his debut 2015-16 campaign has slowed his progress, which had been boosted by 17 in 2020-21 and 23 for a share of last season’s Golden Boot with Salah.
Eleven players have reached the mark in under 200 games, with 15 more breaking 300 and then Jermain Defoe and Sterling taking 303 and 304 games respectively. The remaining six took over 400, with Ryan Giggs’ 534 being the highest figure.
Who’s next?
Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez, currently on 82, looks the likeliest candidate to be the 35th centurion, although in-form Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford has 74. West Ham’s Danny Ings is on 70.
Roberto Firmino (79) is leaving Liverpool in the summer, while Southampton’s Theo Walcott looks unlikely to add sufficiently to his 79 top-flight goals.
Son’s landmark goal means five of the 33 members of the century club are active Premier League players, the others being Kane, Jamie Vardy, Salah and Sterling.
Son is the first Asian player to reach a century of Premier League goals, with only compatriots Park Ji-sung (19) and Ki Sung-yueng (15) and Japan’s Shinji Okazaki (14) even reaching double figures.
It means there are now 13 nationalities represented on the list, with 20 of the 34 players hailing from England.
The only other countries with more than one representative are France, courtesy of Henry and Anelka, and the Netherlands thanks to Robin van Persie and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.
The other nations currently represented are Argentina, Egypt, the Republic of Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago, Belgium, Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Portugal and Wales, with Mahrez having the chance to add Algeria to that list.
