Erling Haaland: Man City's world-class goal machine, made in the Bundesliga

In the time shorter than it takes most of us to eat our lunch, Haaland scored his first three Bundesliga goals. His 23-minute hat-trick on his debut against Augsburg on 18 January 2020 saw him shoot down Joel Pohjanpalo's relatively pedestrian half-hour record to collect his opening three strikes for Bayer Leverkusen with time to spare for dessert. He's been feasting ever since.

Laughing in the face of postprandial somnolence, Haaland gobbled up back-to-back braces in wins over Cologne and Union Berlin, making him the first player to score seven times in his first three matches, eight in his opening five and nine in his maiden six games. The only surprise was that he did not find the back of the net in the ensuing 4-3 loss to Leverkusen, which was - ironically - the first full 90 minutes he played in the league.

Haaland struck a further six times before the season was out, ending the 2019/20 Rückrunde on 13 goals in 15 Bundesliga appearances - or one every 81.7 minutes. During the first half of the campaign, he had scored 14 goals in 16 Austrian Bundesliga matches for Red Bull Salzburg. His first full season of Bundesliga football continued on the same upward trajectory.

About the players 9

Erling

Braut Haaland

Borussia Dortmund

Haaland finished third in the 2020/21 scoring charts - behind Robert Lewandowski (with a record-breaking 41) and Andre Silva (28) - on 27 goals in 28 Bundesliga appearances, but ranked second in terms of minutes-per-goal (89). He never went more than two games without scoring, and made history as the first U21 player to reach 40 career Bundesliga goals with his season-ending brace against Leverkusen.

It marked his 10th double of the league campaign. He only failed to fire more than once on three of the 14 occasions in which he was on target. The other one - at Hertha Berlin's Olympic Stadium - bore witness to four Haaland goals in the space of 32 second-half minutes.

Six appearances into 2021/22, Haaland's struck nine times - four doubles among them - at a clip of one every 64 minutes. A further four assists meant the August Player of the Month had a direct hand in 13 of Dortmund's 22 league goals between Matchdays 1-8, despite missing the two through injury. That, incidentally, was a league-leading contribution at that stage in the campaign and by the end of what was his final season at the Signal Iduna Park, Haaland had struck 22 times in 24 league matches to register yet another spot in the league's top-three for most goals.

Fittingly, Haaland struck from the penalty spot in his final game for Dortmund and did so in front of the club's supporters as BVB came from behind to beat Hertha on the final day of the 2021/22 campaign. He took to social media after the game to say: "It has been nothing but an honour to wear this shirt. At @BVB, I've spent memorable moments, met special people, not to mention a fanbase that has been always our extra man on the pitch. The Yellow Wall is truly incredible. I'll never forget any of this! Thank you all!"

Haaland's Bundesliga scoring spree has translated onto the UEFA Champions League stage, too. With a trademark brace against Sevilla in the 2020/21 last 16, he became the first player to score more than once in four consecutive Champions League outings, and the quickest to reach 20 goals - in just 14 appearances. Twenty-four games was the previous best-mark, held by Tottenham Hotspur's Harry Kane. Cristiano Ronaldo needed 56 matches.

Haaland also broke Paris Saint-Germain forward Kylian Mbappe's record for most Champions League goals before the age of 21, whilst surpassing Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer - his former coach at Molde - as the highest-scoring Norwegian in the competition. He closed out the 2020/21 edition as the tournament's 10-goal leading marksman and UEFA Forward of the Season and Haaland departs Dortmund with a record of 23 goals in 19 Champions League games since making debut for Salzburg in September 2019.

Haaland's DFB Cup record isn't too shabby, either. In eight matches, he's helped himself to eight goals, including two in the 2020/21 final win over RB Leipzig. Throw in his one effort in two DFL Supercups, and that's 86 goals in 89 competitive outings for Die Schwarzgelben. At the same juncture in his BVB career, Lewandowski had scored 39 times - and was three years older.

"If he keeps working at it, Haaland can be the best striker in the world," said Lewandowski, who currently has that particular title under lock and key. "He's still young, but he's already scored a lot of goals. You can see it in his eyes how hungry he is to score goals. He's a huge talent."

Understatement of the year. At 21, Haaland is a scorer of 155 senior goals in 203 appearances for club and country. No player has smashed through the 100-career-goals barrier on European soil at a younger age. In modern circles, only Neymar reached treble figures for goals sooner, albeit for Santos in Brazil.

A physical specimen combining the brute force of Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 and the speed of the T-1000 Advanced Prototype - Haaland has been clocked running a Bundesliga fifth-fastest 22.39 mph - the Haalandator has 20 goals to show for his first 21 caps for his country.

If he manages to continue replicating his Dortmund average of nearly a goal every game (0.97) for City and Norway, we might just be talking about a Golden Boot winner in the making - not to mention a future world's best striker.

Chris Mayer-Lodge

About the clubs Borussia Dortmund

SIGNAL IDUNA PARK

Share