How long will it take Erling Haaland to break Cristiano Ronaldo’s Champions League goal record?
In just 41 Champions League games, Erling Haaland has already bagged 42 goals and established himself as one of the most lethal forwards to grace the competition.
From the moment he fired in a hat-trick on his debut against a helpless Genk just over five years ago, we as fans simply knew we had a complete anomaly on our hands.
This was just the beginning of a terrifyingly fast ascent for the broad, bulky Norwegian brute who was banging them in for Red Bull Salzburg.
Haaland has since gone from an untamed brute to a complete and utter genetic freak with an addiction to scoring goals and a man bun that hipsters around the world could dream of.
And while we could let rip a good several hundred words about that bun, we’re actually focusing on his ever-improving European firing rate.
The 24-year-old has already scored more Champions League goals than Ferenc Puskas, Edinson Cavani, Wayne Rooney, Harry Kane, Gerd Muller – you get the idea, right? Right.
Haaland is a giant, goal-getting psycho and – if he maintains this level of ability – he’ll be catching up with Cristiano Ronaldo, AKA Mr. Champions League, in no time. That is mesmerising.
Ronaldo was recently presented with an award naming him the competition’s official all-time top scorer, having bagged an astonishing 140 goals from 183 games, winning the Champions League on five separate occasions.
He now plays his football in Saudi Arabia with Al Nassr, however, and can only watch on as Manchester City’s Norwegian hunts down his record in the recently refreshed competition like a shark smelling blood. We’ve crunched the numbers and assessed if/when Haaland will surpass Ronaldo.
– Correct at the time of writing, Haaland has scored 42 goals in 41 Champions League games. Ronaldo has scored 140 goals in 183, meaning the Norwegian needs only 98 to draw level and 99 to surpass the five-time Ballon d’Or winner.
– In his Champions League career so far, Haaland is averaging a goal every 77.1 minutes and an average of 1.02 goals per game. At his current rate, he’ll need around 98 games to surpass Ronaldo’s 140 goals.
– With the new league format, teams who qualify for the Champions League will play a minimum of eight games in a mini-league. On top of that is seven games from the last 16 if a team reaches the final, plus another two if the team he plays in doesn’t finish in the top eight of the league table and thus has to play a play-off round.
– If Haaland was to play nothing but Champions League group-stage football for essentially the rest of his career, he’d be looking at surpassing Ronaldo’s 140 goals in around 12 seasons’ time. However, given that he’ll surely be going deep into the competition for at least the next eight to 10 years, he’ll likely edge close to the Portuguese’s record in a shorter amount of time.
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– The 24-year-old scored 12 goals in 11 games as City won the Champions League for the first time in 2023. It’s impossible to predict where he’ll see out his career and extremely unlikely that he plays maximum games in the competition every season, but if he can replicate that firing rate and enjoy a deep run, he’ll make a huge dent in Ronaldo’s record.
– Ronaldo played his final game in the UEFA Champions League aged 37 years, one month and 10 days. Given that Haaland has just turned 24 and needs 12 seasons at worst to get near Ronaldo’s record at his current rate, we project that the Norwegian will be on course to smash it in his early-to-mid thirties.