English Hares and Italian Tortoises: When do Goal-scorers peak?
Yesterday, I walked into a New York bar just in time to see Francesco Totti wheel away in celebration. He had just sent Torino's goalkeeper Joe Hart the wrong way from the penalty spot to score his 250th Serie A goal. Totti has scored more Serie A goals than any other player in the last sixty years. He has also now scored in 23 consecutive Serie A seasons. He turns 40 on Wednesday. An interesting feature of Totti’s career is that he scored nearly half of his goals since he turned thirty. He didn’t even really get going until his late twenties, a slow burner. Contrast this with Wayne Rooney: 173 EPL goals so far, half of which were achieved by the age of 24. A fixture in the Man Utd team since the age of 18, he is now, at 30, perceived to be much a diminished force. So when do strikers normally reach their goal scoring peak, and how rapidly do they decline thereafter? Do the hares that establish themselves early in their career tend to burn out faster than the tortoises that ha