Unless the entire Liverpool team is struck down by a particularly nasty illness between now and the end of May and are unable to complete their fixtures, Manchester City isn't going to win the Premier League championship this season. That means the team and its players have to pick up awards and trophies where they can, and their iconic striker Sergio Aguero collected one after his wide's six-nil thrashing of Aston Villa last weekend. The Argentinian forward is now the Premier League's all-time leading foreign goalscorer.

To understand the magnitude of Aguero's achievement, we must first understand the numbers of those around him. At the top of the Premier League's all-time list is the legendary Newcastle United striker Alan Shearer, with 260 goals. It took Shearer 441 games to reach that tally, with an average of 0.59 goals per game. Nobody even comes close to Shearer on the all-time list, and of the current crop of players, it's arguable that only Tottenham Hotspur's Harry Kane stands a chance of even coming close.

Next up behind Shearer is Wayne Rooney, the Manchester United and England legend who also spent time at Everton and DC United in the United States of America. Rooney scored 208 goals but required 494 games to do so with an average return of 0.42 goals per game. He sits ahead of third-placed Andy Cole, another Manchester United star who hit the back of the net 187 times in 414 games for an average of 0.45 goals per game. Fourth place on the list is shared between Aguero and Frank Lampard, who is now the manager of Chelsea. During his time playing for the team he now leads (along with West Ham United and a brief spell at Manchester City), Lampard scored 177 goals in 609 games. His return of 0.29 goals per game as a midfielder is incredible. 

All three of those players, though, are English, putting Aguero one clear of Thierry Henry on the list of top-scoring foreign players. What really sets Aguero apart from the crowd, though, is his goal to game ratio. It's only taken the striking genius 255 games to notch those 177 goals, giving him a goal-to-game ratio of 0.69. That's higher than everyone we've mentioned so far, including Shearer. It's marginally higher than Henry, the Arsenal star he's just overtaken, who needed an extra three games to reach the tally. If Aguero were given as many games as Shearer had to work on his total, it seems inevitable that he would eventually unseat the outright leader. Unfortunately, at the age of 31 and with plans to eventually go home to play in Argentia before he retires, it appears unlikely that he'll do so. 

There’s another factor aside from his age that’s stopped Aguero from scoring more. Although he seems a little more robust these days than he used to, Aguero once had a reputation for being prone to injuries. During his first few seasons with Manchester City, if Aguero played two games in a row, you could usually safely bet that he would be absent through injury for the next game. As of 2020, Aguero has been with Manchester City for nine years. During those nine years, it wouldn't be too far off the mark to suggest he's missed fifty league games through injury. If we assumed that his goal-to-game ratio remained unchanged and added an extra fifty games to his tally, he'd have 210 goals, and he'd be clean through into second place. He may still get there before he waves goodbye to the club he's given the best years of his career to and heads home. 

In another era, the whole footballing world would hail Aguero as one of the all-time greats. He joined City at the dawn of their footballing revolution. He scored the goal that won them their first-ever Premier League championship and has stayed to win two more. He dreams of winning the European Champions League with the club, and alongside David Silva, he's been the one constant as stars like Yaya Toure, Nigel de Jong, and even Vincent Kompany have been and gone. He's been consistently brilliant and consistently loyal. He should be spoken about with the same respect and reverence as Henry and Shearer, or at least with as much respect as is given to Eden Hazard and Franck Ribery. For some reason, he doesn't. His name is sung in Manchester, but he's largely ignored elsewhere. 

Perhaps his relative anonymity is a consequence of the time he's played in. Even in his own country, he's been overshadowed by the sheer brilliance of Lionel Messi. The battle for footballing supremacy between Messi and Ronaldo has occupied international headlines for years, and denied anyone else a look in, regardless of their achievements. Ronaldo's name and likeness are so famous that they were used to advertise the 'Striker Goes Wild' game on online slots websites such as Amigo Slots. Meanwhile, Aguero keeps plugging away like an online slots player who isn't enjoying any luck. He keeps putting the goals in, but he isn't getting much back out in terms of plaudits or recognition. Eventually, though, just by the law of averages alone, an online slots game will pay out big money if you keep playing and spinning. It's to be hoped that Aguero gets his jackpot prize while he's still playing and in a position to appreciate it rather than ten years from now when his career is over, and everyone realizes that they overlooked an all-time-great striker. 

Sergio Aguero is not Lionel Messi, and Sergio Aguero is not Cristiano Ronaldo. He’s simply Sergio Aguero, and that should be more than enough to celebrate for fans of great footballers all over the world. He’s been a one-of-a-kind striker in the English Premier League, and the division will be all the poorer for his departure when he eventually decides to move on. From the moment he scored his first Premier League goal in 2011 to the moment of his record-breaking strike last weekend, he’s been a class act on the field, and a shy, retiring, humble figure away from it. He’s more than earned his place in the history books.