Luca Toni, Italy
After top-scoring in the Bundesliga with FC Bayern München and hitting ten more to end up as the 2007/08 UEFA Cup’s most prolific striker along with Pavel Pogrebnyak of FC Zenit St. Petersburg, Azzurri fans will be expecting Toni’s goal spree to continue here. Toni must produce if the FIFA World Cup holders are to get out of a demanding Group C.

Jan Koller, Czech Republic
Baroš will hope to hold on to his award but his compatriot Koller could succeed him having been scoring at international level for over nine years. The big man’s record of 54 goals in 87 appearances for his country is phenomenal, as is his consistency: he scored six goals in UEFA EURO 2008™ qualifying – just as he did in 2000 and 2004.

Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal
Ronaldo may play on the wing for Portugal but he is still their greatest goal threat and comes into the tournament in the form of his life. The 23-year-old struck 42 goals this season, top-scoring in the UEFA Champions League and English Premier League for Manchester United FC and after finding the target in Moscow against Chelsea FC is desperate to make his mark on another big occasion.

Miroslav Klose, Germany
Germany have been tipped to go far at UEFA EURO 2008™ and that should give the FC Bayern München striker ample chance to add to the 39 goals he has already scored for his country at a rate of over one every two games. Klose is the only player in history to score five or more goals in successive FIFA World Cups, but is yet to score at a UEFA European Championship.

Thierry Henry, France
Fresh from playing his 100th game for Les Bleus, Henry will be keen to put a difficult first season with FC Barcelona behind him. His partnership with rising star Karim Benzema has set French pulses racing and though the youngster has been hogging the headlines of late, France’s record scorer shows no sign of giving up centre stage just yet.

Euzebiusz Smolarek, Poland
Smolarek’s nine goals in qualifying is more than any other player at these finals with David Healy’s Northern Ireland having missed out and Eduardo da Silva suffering injury. That has taken his overall international tally from four to 13, and it seems likely that the Real Racing Club Santander striker, who drew a blank at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, will be able to emulate his father Włodzimierz in scoring at a major finals.

Ruud van Nistelrooy, Netherlands
Having patched up his differences with coach Marco van Basten, Van Nistelrooy will be eager to make the most of this opportunity. Injury kept him out of the side for much of Real Madrid CF’s run-in but he is coming into form. He scored in four consecutive games for club and country up to his strike in the 1-1 draw with Denmark on 29 May, which took him up to 31 Netherlands goals - nine short of all-time leader Patrick Kluivert.

Fernando Torres, Spain
After Torres’s formidable first season with Liverpool FC, Spain fans have every reason to look ahead to UEFA EURO 2008™ with confidence. The question is, can their midfield provide the ammunition in such devastating style as Steven Gerrard does at Anfield?

Nihat Kahveci, Turkey
After more than one season of injury frustration, the Turkey forward struck 23 Villarreal CF goals in 2007/08 and also contributed vital strikes in qualifying for his nation. Good enough for Fatih Terim to leave out folk hero Hakan Şükür.

Zlatan Ibrahimović (Sweden)
“He’s probably one of the best forwards today,” says Sweden coach Lars Lagerbäck of Ibrahimović. The return of Henrik Larsson will ease some of the goalscoring burden on the 26-year-old FC Internazionale Milano striker who scored 17 times for FC Internazionale Milano last season.

Rutgerus Johannes Martinius "Ruud" Van Nistelrooy (originally spelled van Nistelrooij) (born 1 July 1976 in Oss, North Brabant) is a Dutch footballer who plays as a centre forward for Real Madrid and is a member of the Netherlands national football team. He previously starred for Manchester United, where he holds the record for being the club’s top scorer in European competition, despite having only played for them for five seasons.

He has been the top scorer in three different European leagues as well as having been the top goal scorer in the UEFA Champions League on three occasions.

Club career

The Netherlands

Van Nistelrooy started his professional career in 1993 with Dutch second division side FC Den Bosch, where he was converted from a central defender to centre forward after playing part-time for Nooit Gedacht and Magriet. After netting 12 goals in 31 games in the 1996-97 campaign, he transferred for €350.000 to SC Heerenveen the next year, and scored thirteen goals in 31 matches in his only season with the club. He was then signed by PSV Eindhoven the next season for €6.3 million, a then-record transfer sum between two Dutch teams.

He scored an impressive 31 goals in 34 matches, the highest season total in the Eredivisie and second-highest in Europe overall, in addition to scoring all three of PSV’s goals in a Champions League match against HJK Helsinki on November 25, 1998. Van Nistelrooy capped off the year by winning the Dutch Player of the Year award. In his second season at the club, he had netted another 29 goals and again finished with the Eredivisie scoring title.

Just days after an £18.5 million transfer to Manchester United in the summer of 2000 was shelved after United’s medical staff had found problems with his medial ligaments, Van Nistelrooy suffered a knee injury during a training session. When the transaction was finalized in April 2001, United were forced to pay PSV an additional £500,000 for the player’s services. After he successfully passed a medical, Van Nistelrooy joined Manchester United for a total of £19 million, and signed a five-year contract with the then reigning Premier League champions.

Manchester United

During his first season, Van Nistelrooy scored 23 goals in 32 league games, ending the year on a league-record eight-game consecutive scoring streak. He also scored ten Champions League goals, and ended his debut season by being named the PFA Players’ Player of the Year, scoring 36 goals in the process. Van Nistelrooy held the record for most goals in a debut season in the English Premier League (23) until Fernando Torres of Liverpool broke his record by scoring his 24th on the last day of the 2007/8 season.

In the 2002-03 season, Van Nistelrooy scored 44 goals in 52 games in all competitions. He scored 12 Champions League goals in 10 games, as well as two in Champions League qualifying. He was the leading scorer in the Premier League scoring 25 goals in 34 games, including three hat-tricks, and he ended the season with another eight-game scoring streak.

Van Nistelrooy started the 2003–04 season by scoring twice in his first two league games, which boosted his consecutive-games record to ten. He scored his 100th and 101st goals for the club in a 4–3 victory over Everton F.C. on February 7, 2004, while also breaking Denis Law’s European club goalscoring record.

He missed a large part of the 2004–05 season due to injury, but nonetheless scored a Champions League-best eight goals despite Manchester United’s elimination in the knockout stage by A.C. Milan. He is currently the third-highest European scorer in the UEFA Champions League, behind Raúl and Andrey Shevchenko, with 57 goals.

At the start of the 2005–06 season, Van Nistelrooy scored in United’s first four Premiership games. He went on to finish as the second-highest scorer in the Premiership with 21 goals, behind Thierry Henry of Arsenal.

The Dutchman struck 100 goals in his first three seasons in Manchester, and overtook Denis Law’s title as the club’s all-time top scorer in European competition in his fourth term, and by the end of his fifth year at Old Trafford he’d reached 150 goals in fewer than 200 starts.

Exit from Manchester United

Van Nistelrooy was an unused substitute in the League Cup final against Wigan Athletic, fueling speculation of a rift between him and Ferguson, which Van Nistelrooy denied. He was nonetheless left on the bench for six consecutive league matches, and though he then returned to the starting lineup and scored match-winners against West Ham United and Bolton Wanderers F.C., his earlier lack of playing time enabled Henry to overtake him as the Premiership’s leading scorer. Fresh doubt spread over Van Nistelrooy’s future when he was benched for the season finale against Charlton Athletic, won 4-0 by United. Ferguson claimed that Van Nistelrooy was angry at the decision and left the stadium three hours before kick-off.

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