Changing of the guard?
©TM/IMAGO
Norway almost made history on Tuesday night, when their remarkable 11-1 win over Maldova fell just one goal short of the biggest wins in European World Cup qualfiying history. The solitary goal from the battered visitors meant that Norway’s impressive performance ranked joint-second alongside North Macedonia’s 11-1 win over Liechenstein in 1996 and behing Germany’s 12-0 win over Cyprus in 1969. But there was certainly still plenty to celebrate.
To no great surprise, star striker Erling Haaland was amongst the goals with no less than five to his name over the course of the match. That was also something of an impressive historical feat, with the Norwegian talisman now sitting second only to Hans Krankl – who managed six goals in a single game for Austria – for most goals scored in a European qualifying match for the World Cup. Which now takes Haaland’s record for his national team to an incredible 48 goals in 45 games across all competitions.
Indeed, Haaland’s remarkable goalscoring rate for Norway has not only broken a number of records with the national team but also now threatens to upend the orthodoxy that was set by the global stars that came before him. Not only is Haaland scoring at an incredible rate for a Norwegian player, but he may also be gunning for Cristiano Ronaldo’s remarkable record of most goals scored at international level in the history of the sport.
Comparing Haaland’s record to Ronaldo’s at international level
When we consider the international record of both players as they currently stand at the time of writing, he not only shows the remarkable record that Ronaldo has for Portugal but also hints at why Haaland may have his eyes set on catching his Portuguese rival. As we can see in the graphic above, Ronaldo has bagged a remarkable 119 goals in 169 competitive games for his country. Not only has the former Manchester United and Real Madrid star created goals at a remarkable rate for Portugal, but he’s done so while adding a degree of longevity to his game that few other players in the game could come close to matching.
In stark contrast, Haaland only broke the 30-game barrier for competitive games at international level last year. And in that time he picked up 33 goal contributions. Since then he’s added a further nine goals in five games to his tally. Naturally, he’s some way off catching Ronaldo in terms of sheer number of games played for his nation, but when we consider the average goal contributions of both players per 90 minutes of football played, we can see that the Man City striker is already scoring or creating goals at a far higher rate than Ronaldo. While the Portuguese forward averaged around 0.74 goals per 90 minutes played for Portugal, Haaland is averaging 1.19 per 90.
Fascinating enough, when we narrow in on the form of both players in their first 30 games for their national teams, we can clearly see where the differences may lie. As we can see in the graphic above, Ronaldo bagged an impressive 15 goals and 10 assists in his first 30 games for Portugal. Which naturally reflects the goal output of a player who began his career playing on the wing for club and country. The Portuguese star still notched up a very impressive record of 25 goal contributions in 30 games, but it still lags notably behind Haaland’s 33 goal contributions in his first 30 games for Norway.
Will Haaland catch Ronaldo’s goal scoring record?
So we know that Haaland has enjoyed a far better start to his international goalscoring record than Ronaldo, but will he be able to catch the Portuguese star before the end of his career? Well, to do that Haaland will have to bag 117 international goals for his country in competitive games. And since he’s currently averaging 1.19 goals per 90 minutes for his country, it would suggest that Haaland would surpass Ronaldo’s record if he were to continue at this pace for another 66 international games. When we consider that Norway have played on average around eight competitive games per year since Haaland started playing for his nation’s senior team, that would suggest that it would roughly take another nine years for Haaland to catch Ronaldo’s record. Which would require the forward to continue scoring goals for his national team well into his mid-30s, just as Ronaldo has done for Portugal.
However, there are a few caveats to consider here. The first one is that while Haaland undoubtedly enjoys scoring goals for fun in World Cup qualifiers or Nations League clashes against lesser foes, the Man City star has yet to feature for his national team at a major tournament. Should Norway reach a World Cup or Euros in the coming years, that will add more games to Haaland’s fixture list and more opportunities to add to his goal tally in a shorter period of time, but it may also make it far harder for him to continue his current rate of scoring. After all, a hat-trick against Kazakhstan in the Nations League or Maldova in qualifying games is far easier than scoring against Germany, Argentina or Spain in the knock-out rounds of a major competition.
With 22 goals in 52 games at major tournaments for Portugal, Ronaldo has certainly proven that he could score goals at a remarkable rate with an incredible average of 1.06 goals per 90 minutes of tournament football. If Haaland really wants to catch Ronaldo’s record he’ll first have to help Norway qualify for their first major tournament since 2000. And once they’re there, he’ll have to make sure he can score goals just as readily as Ronaldo has done for Portugal over the course of the last 20 years.