By Opta Analyst | Created at 2024-11-26 21:03:00 | Updated at 2024-11-26 23:36:04
2 hours ago
Erling Haaland is no stranger to breaking records, and now he has another to add to his collection. He has reached 50 goal involvements in the UEFA Champions League faster than anyone.
Yes, it’s another Erling Haaland landmark.
With his penalty in Manchester City’s clash with Feyenoord on Tuesday, Haaland reached 50 goal involvements in the UEFA Champions League, doing so faster than anyone else in the competition’s history.
The Norwegian now has 45 goals and five assists in the Champions League, and reached his half-century in just 44 games, one match quicker than Ruud van Nistelrooy.
Haaland has taken to the biggest club competition in Europe like a duck to water – if that duck were a constant menace to any opposition and routinely breaking records while people question how a duck was allowed to play in the Champions League in the first place.
His Champions League goal involvements have come from his time with Salzburg (9 – 8 goals, 1 assist), Borussia Dortmund (17 – 15 goals, 2 assists) and Man City (24 – 22 goals, 2 assists).
The team to have suffered Haaland’s wrath the most in the Champions League are Sevilla, who he has recorded seven goal involvements against (6 goals, 1 assist) in just three games. He also has six goals (0 assists) against RB Leipzig, though five of those did come in just one of his four appearances against the Bundesliga side.
Haaland has hit this landmark quicker than some of the greatest figures the European game has ever seen. As well as Van Nistelrooy, the 24-year-old has reached the total quicker than Kylian Mbappé (51 games), Neymar (52 games), Lionel Messi (59 games), Karim Benzema (59 games), Robert Lewandowski (61 games), Thierry Henry (65 games), Raúl (68 games) and Alessandro Del Piero (68 games).
But where is Cristiano Ronaldo in that list? Well, he actually took 78 games to get to 50 goals and assists. In fairness, he significantly sped up after that, and has 180 goal involvements in 183 Champions League games, the most of anyone in the competition’s history (ahead of Messi’s 168 G+A in 163 games).
Of course, it must be acknowledged that, as with many others on the list above, Haaland’s goals are doing rather a lot of heavy lifting in terms of his goal involvements. He recently became the second fastest player to score 20 Champions League goals for one club, behind Van Nistelrooy.
Since Haaland made his Champions League debut, scoring a hat-trick for Salzburg in a 6-2 win over Genk on 17 September 2019, only two players have recorded more goal involvements in the competition than him. Mbappé has 51 in 52 games while Lewandowski has an incredible 56 in just 45 games.
With 45 goals in 44 games overall, Haaland sits joint 14th in the all-time list of Champions League top scorers. It’s anyone’s guess as to how many more he can add in the next few years.
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