The former Yeovil and Bournemouth forward competing with Messi to be MLS' top goalscorer ahead of Decision Day

Martin Macdonald
Martin Macdonald
  • Updated: 18 Oct 2025 04:37 CDT
  • 2 min read
Lionel Messi
© IMAGO

As we approach Major League Soccer Decision Day, there are two surprise names in competition with the legendary Lionel Messi to be the league's regular season top goalscorer.

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At the moment, the Argentine leads the goalscoring charts with 26, with LAFC's Denis Bouanga on 24 and Nashville's Sam Surridge on 23.

English football fans will be aware of Surridge, who had somewhat of a journeyman career in the United Kingdom before his $6.5 million switch from Nottingham Forest to Nashville FC in July of 2023.

The 27-year-old started his career with Bournemouth before subsequent moves to Weymouth, Poole Town, Yeovil Town, Oldham Athletic and Swansea City.

In 2021, he completed a permanent transfer to Stoke City before moving to Forest a year later.

Speaking to the Overlap US podcast, he discussed fighting for the league's top scorer award with the best player in history.

“Yeah, it’s great,” the Nashville forward confessed.

“It’s obviously made it more special the goals coming this year because I’m competing with him. But yeah, at the same time like throughout the season, I’ve always tried to kind of get to where I want to get to. If I carried on looking at his goals, I think I’d probably go crazy, because he’s scoring every week and it’s very draining.

MLS top scorers 2025

PlayerClubGoals
Lionel MessiInter Miami26
Denis BouangaLAFC24
Sam SurridgeNashville23

“I think I’ve tried to keep consistent - even when I haven’t scored for two, three games, I’ve always said ‘I know I’ll get my chance and I’ll get a goal. And I’ve tried to build that and I think this season has been great for me, where I’ve kind of consistently just gone back to what I want to do. And I’ve got the goals that I needed...

"Obviously competing with him is nice. But at the same time, I’ve had my goals where I wanted to get to and hopefully I’m not done yet.”

It's a big task, but Surridge needs to score a hat-trick and hope Messi doesn't score this weekend just to tie the multiple time Ballon d'Or winner in the standings for the regular season.

And, it just so happens that Inter Miami face Nashville in the final match on Saturday.

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