There was a period when it looked like we’d never again witness players as great as Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
Then along came Erling Haaland.
While the pair of football legends were fighting out in El Clasico and setting records that looked insurmountable, Haaland was making blips on the radar at Molde and Salzburg that later became seismic at Borussia Dortmund and Manchester City.
At the latter side, the Norwegian striker has done it all, winning City’s first Champions League and European treble in his debut season in 2022/23 with an astonishing 52 goals in 53 games.
He hasn’t let off ever since, and is, by most accounts, the best goalscorer in world football.
Haaland’s first blip on the radar came when he scored a ridiculous nine goals for Norway in a 12-0 win over Poland as a teenager at the U20 World Cup.
However, despite going off the charts at Salzburg and Dortmund in the following years, Haaland hasn’t quite hit the same heights for Norway, until now.
With 11 goals in ten games for his country this calendar year, Haaland is living up to the hope pinned on him by a nation.
No player has more goals than the 24-year-old in the current Nations League campaign, taking his total up to seven in six games with a hat-trick against Kazakhstan promoting Norway to League A.
In fact, earlier in the campaign, against Slovenia in October, he became his country’s all-time top scorer with two goals surpassing an 87-year-old record held by Jorgen Juve.
Haaland is now accelerating well past that feat, and with 38 goals in 39 caps, the sky is the limit.
However, getting to the very top will be a tough ask, particularly considering the man there is still adding to his total.
Ronaldo is the second highest scorer in the 2023/24 Nations League with five goals, and he now has 135 for his country, putting him clear of Argentina captain and old rival Lionel Messi who is in second with 112.
The 39-year-old Al Nassr striker also recently became the first footballer in history to score 900 goals, and by all accounts he looks ready to aim for 1000.
Haaland, though, is already chipping away at a number of his records, particularly in a competition that Ronaldo made his own with five titles, the Champions League.
The no.9 is the fastest and youngest player to 40 goals, and for the first time Ronaldo’s record of 140 goals in Europe’s top tier competition looks like it could be under threat.
However, Haaland has been able to do that by playing for arguably the greatest manager of all time at potentially the best team in Europe since he joined, something that can’t be said of his situation with the national team.
Even with fellow elite talent, the Arsenal star Martin Odegaard, and a number of other high calibre stars in the Norway squad, the Scandinavian team are miles away from Portugal, and therefore a guarantee of extra tournament games for Haaland to fill his boots.
Haaland is currently scoring goals for Norway at a rate of 0.97 per-game as opposed to Ronaldo’s 0.62, meaning that if Haaland maintained that rate he would beat the Portugal captain’s record in his 140th game.
Reaching 140 games is a far from guarantee given the game time, and there are doubts whether that will change any time soon.
Norway haven’t been at a major tournament since Euro 2000 and even with Haaland and Odegaard firing, they haven’t seen the level of improvement needed.
Missing out on Euro 2020 by four points in qualifying, they then missed out on the 2022 World Cup qualifying play-offs by three points to Turkey.
Even with their Nations League success, in terms of major tournaments things are on a downturn, with Norway then dropping to six points behind Scotland in Euro 2024 qualifying, meaning a 2026 World Cup berth is in no way a certainty.
Such disadvantages mean that Haaland plays an average of 6.5 international games per-year, as opposed to Ronaldo’s 9.7, at that rate, Haaland wouldn’t reach the 140 game mark until 2040 when he will be 40.
Given Ronaldo turns 40 in February, the maths suggest Ronaldo’s record is indeed under threat, particularly if Norway can improve enough to give their star man the extra games required.
Ronaldo, though, is known as one of the fittest players to ever play the game, and has remained largely injury free throughout his career, unlike Haaland who was blighted by a number of issues at Dortmund.
However, all caveats aside, it’s clear fans are witnessing a level of greatness once again that many thought it was impossible, and Ronaldo may well have to stick around a bit longer if he’s to keep one of his most famous records under lock and key.
