Football's top five attacking duos today have a special sort of chemistry, with some near-telepathic passages of play making them unbearable for most opponents.
With no further ado and in no particular order, here are our top five attacking partnerships still active at the very top.
The five best attacking duos today
Harry Kane and Leroy Sane
The summer transfer window of 2023 was something of a disruptive influence for several key partnerships. From an English perspective at least, the most significant ‘breakup’ of that summer saw Harry Kane leave Spurs for Bayern Munich, and duly turn his back on an eight-year partnership with Son Heung-min, which had been unplayable at times during its eight-year lifespan.
Bayern colleague Sane is a very different player to Son, but the German shares one key attribute with the South Korean – namely searing, blistering pace. Simply bursting the net aside, one of Kane's signature creative moves is to drop out of the traditional number nine spot and sweep an inch-perfect long pass out to the wing for an onrushing winger, who he already knows is on the move. Said winger will then play him the perfect ball in return, leaving Kane to do what he does best.
For that reason, Kane hasn’t really suffered any ill effects on a personal level after leaving Spurs, despite still being yet to win a major senior-level trophy. Netting 44 times in 45 games overall, he romped to the Bundesliga top scorer award in 2023/24, with the December of that campaign seeing him become the quickest player to reach 20 Bundesliga goals in a season. In taking just 15 rounds to hit that target, he broke Uwe Seeler's 60-year record (20 goals in 21 rounds) by a country mile.
Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne
Premier League history is awash with dream partnerships, such as Bergkamp/Henry, Cole/Yorke and Shearer/Sutton. All of these lifted the title at least once, but with the increase in the proportion of foreign managers has come a shift away from two strikers, firmly in favour of a number 10 + striker combo.
Few duos exemplify the virtues that this new style of partnership holds more than Haaland and De Bruyne. The fact that no Premier League player has scored more league goals than Haaland since the start of 2022/23 is down to the service he received in his incredible debut campaign, which saw him net 36 times in the league.
This partnership somewhat faded in 2023/24 due to Kevin De Bruyne being injured on the very first matchday. But his return correlated with yet another late surge to the title for Man City, after they looked at risk of falling behind Liverpool and Arsenal in the winter of that campaign.
Albeit against an opponent City were always going to sweep aside, they demonstrated just what a combined force they are in the FA Cup 5th round clash against Luton, when Haaland scored four De Bruyne-assisted goals in a 6-2 victory at Kenilworth Road.
City never looked back from there, and went on to lift a fourth successive league title.
Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard
Arsenal's attack is notoriously lop-sided. But who can be surprised? Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard are two of the best players in the Premier League, and both play on the Gunners' right side, with some overlapping assistance from their fellow defenders.
In 2023/24 Odegaard was amongst the leading midfielders in Europe’s five biggest domestic leagues for chances created from open play, successful through balls, passes into the penalty area and passes into the final third. Better still, he did all of this while finding the time to score 11 goals.
The man at the end of many of those passes was (and still is) Bukayo Saka, who has scored 21 goals and assisted 18 times at club level since the start of 2023/24. So if Arsenal can beat the odds and end Manchester City's Premier League monopoly any time soon, it will be thanks to their dynamic right-sided duo.
Ironically, despite playing on the right, both Saka and Odegaard are left-footed, and both men star in our top 10 left-footed players list.
Lautaro Martinez and Marcus Thuram
Like its English counterpart, the Italian top flight has had some iconic duos in the past. In particular, Filippo Inzaghi and Alessandro Del Piero made Juventus a millennial titan of the beautiful game. Today, however, Inter Milan are the side to beat, and a big reason for that is the way Lautaro Martinez has so readily gelled with supporting strikers.
In 2020/21, it was Romelu Lukaku. In 2021/22 and 2022/23 it was Edin Dzeko. And in 2023/24, he formed one of the best-attacking duos around with Marcus Thuram, who joined on a free transfer from Borussia Monchengladbach. The Frenchman has proven the perfect foil for the diminutive Argentinian, being an intelligent and powerful runner who uses his movement and physicality to open up space for his partner.
In turn, Martinez had a career-best season in 2023/24, with 27 goals (24 in Serie A for the top scorer award) and four assists on top. The Argentine is once more up there amongst the contenders to be Serie A’s top gun, with Thuram also being one of them, meaning that Inter could end up as the first club in 17 years to accomplish a one-two in the scoring charts, after Juventus duo Del Piero and David Trezeguet locked out the top two spots in 2007/08.
Vinícius Junior and Rodrygo
Over in La Liga, Raul and Fernando Morientes kept Real Madrid firmly on their perch in the late 1990s and early 2000s, despite the sustained threat of main rivals Barcelona. Then came almost a decade of Cristiano Ronaldo mania, which saw him complete his development from wing wizard to an all-out attacker, who was more than comfortable anywhere in the final third of the pitch.
Fears of a downturn after his departure to Juventus were unfounded. The talent kept coming, and Real Madrid's pair of Brazilian wing wizards have more than filled the void left behind by CR7. Though they are both still yet to reach the prime of their careers, Vinícius Junior and Rodrygo have terrorised defenders for several seasons now, and 2023/24 was arguably their best campaign yet, culminating in a La Liga and Champions League double.
The pair have a superb and intuitive understanding of one another, and frequently swap positions to cause opposition headaches. Nowhere was this more evident than against Manchester City in the Champions League quarter-finals back in April 2024, when current runaway Ballon d’Or favourite Vinicius Jr burst down the right wing and found his old friend in the middle, who converted to score a crucial goal and keep Real in the competition.
