10 Most Notorious Serie A Goalscorers of All Time

What exactly do we mean by notorious?

Well, a lot of things.

Diego Maradona? Yeah, he's notorious. Tori Spelling? Yep. Ronaldo? You better believe it.

So, basically, what we're talking about here is someone who played in Serie A, scored a lot of goals and was either crazy, goofy or scary—or maybe all three at once.

Those traits make for an interesting player. That's why we're recounting some of the best right now.

Enjoy.

Silvio Piola

Silvio Piola is the all-time leading scorer in Serie A with 274 goals in 537 appearances with Pro Vercelli, Lazio, Torino, Juventus and Novara from 1929-54.

You can't get any more notorious than that.

Diego Maradona

Diego Maradona scored 81 Serie A goals while playing for Napoli from 1984-91.

He led Napoli to two Serie A titles, the 1989 UEFA Cup and a few European Cup appearances. He led Seria A in scoring in 1987-88, and he led Napoli to the Coppa Italiana in 1987.

But he was also addicted to cocaine, was fined for missing games and practices, and as rumor had it, struck up a friendship with the local mob.

Now that's scary.

Roberto Baggio

Besides rocking the most awesome hairstyle in World Cup history (a later version can be found here), Roberto Baggio was also a feared striker in Serie A.

When he was sold—against his wishes—by Fiorentina to Juventus in 1990, riots broke out. It's hard to blame the fans: Baggio scored 218 goals in 488 career Serie A appearances.

Still, you can't get any more notorious than that rat-tail.

Ronaldo

In his prime, the original Ronaldo was the most feared player on the planet.

And he spent one of his best seasons, 1997-98, with Inter Milan. Ronaldo scored 25 Serie A goals—34 in all competitions—that season, which was bookended by finishes of first and second in the FIFA World Player of the Year voting.

Ronaldo finished with 58 league goals in seven Serie A seasons with Inter and AC Milan, but he never played better than that 1997-98 season.

Gunnar Nordahl

Gunnar Nordahl didn't score as many Serie A goals as Silvio Piola, but his ratio of games to goals was much, much better.

Nordahl, a Swedish international, scored 225 goals in just 291 league matches with AC Milan and AS Roma from 1949-58. That's a strike rate of one goal for every 1.29 games.

That's just nasty.

Francesco Totti

Totti loves to score goals (207 so far in 481 league matches with AS Roma from 1992 to the present).

He also likes to celebrate his goals. Like the time (pictured) he celebrated a goal against rival Lazio by revealing a shirt with the words VI HO PURGATO ANCORA on his undershirt.

It translates to something like "I have purged you again."

Filippo Inzaghi

Filippo Inzaghi has scored 197 Serie A goals in a career that started in 1991 and is still going. Along the way, he's scored 70 goals in the Champions League, at one point a record.

He's dated at least that many models, showgirls and actresses during that time.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been a lethal goalscorer wherever he's played. That includes Italy, where he's scored 34 goals in four-plus seasons with Inter and AC Milan.

But Ibra is notorious for other reasons, mostly for being a not-very-nice dude.

Luca Toni

Luca Toni led Serie A with 31 goals for Fiorentina in 2005-06. In 394 league appearances (both Serie A and B) from 1994 to now, he's scored a whopping 171 goals.

But Toni has also attracted his share of controversy. He was criticized for his move from Palermo to Fiorentina in 2005, and he had a falling out with Louis Van Gaal, the manager of Bundesliga club Bayern Munich, in 2009.

Cristiano Lucarelli

Sometimes a player can be notorious for being a bad teammate. Cristiano Lucarelli certainly qualifies as a controversial teammate.

A noted admirer of Che Guevara, Lucarelli has been known to celebrate goals with Communist gestures (pictured). Nothing wrong with that, really, but it's probably not going to win him many friends.

It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that Lucarelli has played for 13 clubs since his debut in 1992. But he's a great goalscorer: 197 goals in 470 Italian league appearances.