They have not yet abdicated and the football world is already looking for a successor to both Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Both Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland have long seemed the best positioned to continue their hegemony and we will review which of the two has been more successful so far.
Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe are two of the greatest prodigies in world soccer today. The Norwegian, two years younger, took longer to make his breakthrough and has had as a reference the extraordinary records of the Frenchman, who has approached with his football to that of giants like Leo Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo in their beginnings and has even surpassed them.
In BeSoccer we will try to discern which of these two players is more clinical and decisive in front of goal based on their updated and detailed data.
Club goals
Despite the fact that these two stars started their careers very early, there is still an obvious difference in games played as Kylian Mbappe’s breakthough took place a couple of years before Erling Haaland’s. The Frenchman has played a total of 424 games for his clubs, split into 308 for PSG, 60 for Monaco and 56 for Real Madrid. His tally in these club matches amounts to 326 goals, 256 of which he has scored with the Parisian team, 27 with ‘les monegasques’ and 43 as a ‘Merengue’.
Erling Haaland, for his part, has so far played 308 games for the four clubs he has represented professionally. He began his career with Molde, for whom he played 50 games before moving to Salzburg, where he made 27 appearances. Finally, he left Borussia Dortmund for Manchester City with 89 appearances to his credit. He has now played 142 matches in the light blue jersey. In this time, the giant has scored a total of 256 goals, divided as follows: 20 at Molde, 29 at Salzburg, 86 at Borussia Dortmund and 121 at Manchester City.
Taking all this data into account, Kylian Mbappe’s club scoring average is 0.77 goals per game, lower than his average at PSG (0.84) and higher than his average when he started out at Monaco (0.45). As a player with Real Madrid, he is currently averaging 0.77 goals. Haaland’s overall average is 0.83 goals per game, which breaks down to 0.97 goals per game at Borussia, 1.07 goals per game at Salzburg and 0.4 goals per game at Molde. So far, he has scored 0.85 goals per game at Manchester City.
National team goals
It is difficult to make a comparison between the two in the international context, as Norway is a much weaker team than France. Of course, Haaland’s leadership with his country is much more evident than Mbappe’s with the French team, where there are more stars and the responsibility does not usually fall on a single player despite the fact that Kylian is the great reference.
The French player has made 90 appearances so far for the French national team and has scored 50 goals at an average of 0.56 goals per game played. Haaland has already 43 games in the Norway jersey and has scored 42 goals, so he has an average of 0.98 goals per game.
Who has more total goals?
Having defined the scoring record of both players for both club and country, it is time to take a look at the aggregate. Kylian Mbappe has 514 official matches to his credit, in which he has managed to score 376 goals with a scoring average of 0.73 goals (he scores almost 3 out of every 4 matches) per game in his combined career.
Erling Haaland has stopped the counter in 351 official matches in which he has managed to score on 298 occasions. His scoring average, therefore, is 0.85 goals per game so far.
The averages therefore smile on the Scandinavian prodigy against a Kylian Mbappe who has diversified and improved a lot in his combination play in recent seasons, perhaps making him a less lethal but much more complete player.