Erling Haaland is considered a natural event and pulverizes goal records on a weekly basis. But how are its values really to be classified? One try.
The record came about with a lot of feeling. When Erling Haaland sprinted from the halfway line with his inimitable expansive strides in the 70th minute of the game against West Ham, everything looked like a typical goal attempt by the Norwegian.
But the Manchester City striker then showed how multifaceted his finishing repertoire has become: instead of hammering the ball into the goal with full instep, he overcame the puzzled goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski with a sensitive chip from the edge of the penalty area.
The 1.95 meter giant then slid across the lawn and imitated a Zen meditation pose while sitting cross-legged. A jubilation that symbolizes the current condition of the Norwegian – it combines original strength with monk-like calm. This combination takes Haaland on a path to success that no player has gone before – at least in the Premier League.
Because there Haaland improved the age-old record of Andy Cole and Alan Shearer with his 35th goal of the season. They got the ball over the line 34 times in the 1993/94 and 94/95 seasons – but in a league with 42 games. Haaland, on the other hand, managed this feat in just 31 games – and he has four more to build on his historic record.
If you extrapolate Haaland’s previous goal rate, he should have 39.4 goals at the end of the season. So it seems quite realistic to reach the magical 40-goal mark – especially since there has been no opponent from the top 6 in the table in the last few games.
Records pave his way
Haaland is currently on a run like no other striker before him: youngest player with 30 Champions League goals, best goal in the Premier League, goal record for a Premier League player in all competitions (51 in 46 games) – for which Norwegian elemental power seems to be there are no limits. And that at just 22 years of age.
The English tabloid press dubbed the blond Norwegian “Thunder God” – due to the alleged visual resemblance – and compared him to the comic superhero Thor. “He’s scoring goal after goal, he’s just a machine,” praised City legend Yaya Touré. In the wake of the hype, some experts on the island are even predicting that Haaland will be the best striker ever, or at least of the century.
But: Is Haaland really that good in a historical comparison?
Correspondences of this kind are naturally difficult, because every footballing epoch has certain playful characteristics and tactical trends. This affects not only the total number of goals scored, but also ball possession, game times and injury times.
In 1990, for example, Marco van Basten was top scorer in Serie A with just 19 goals. At the time, this was considered the best league, and van Basten’s AC Milan the best team in the world – mainly because of a revolutionary defensive system.
Scoring goals was not the top priority in coach Arrigo Sacci’s system. In van Basten’s 19-goal season, Milan netted just 56 times. A year later, when the “Rossoneri” became champions, they did so with just 36 goals in 34 games.
Van Basten nevertheless became the world footballer and won the Ballon d’Or three times. But is he a worse goalscorer than Haaland in football history? It is difficult to answer this question, as the game in the transition from the 80s to the 90s was completely different than in 2022/23.
While central strikers like Haaland are now an essential part of the game structure of their teams, in van Basten’s time the center forward was largely cut off from the game. Most of the time he was supported by a tough man-marker like Jürgen Kohler, who incidentally was the only classic defender to win Germany’s footballer of the year – another indication of the fundamentally different nature of the game back then.
