Norwegian Erling Haaland, Manchester City’s English striker, outperformed all the world’s national team strikers during the qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup, after leading his country to come very close to qualifying for the World Cup scheduled to be held in North America.
Absolute dominance of Norwegian Haaland
The “Ho Score” website, which specializes in statistics, revealed that Norwegian Erling Haaland is far ahead of all the world’s strikers in achieving the expected goals he has exceeded, and that he has reached more than double that of any other player during these qualifying matches.
The website indicated that the expected goals for the Manchester City striker were 10.14 goals, but Haaland succeeded in scoring 12 goals in only 6 matches, including a hat-trick in two matches, to lead his country very close to achieving qualification for the next World Cup.
Haaland outperforms Harry Kane and Messi
The Norwegian was not satisfied with this rate, but became the fastest striker to score 50 goals with his country’s national team compared to the number of matches he played, as he scored 51 goals in only 46 international matches, beating heavy names such as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe.
Haaland broke the record of the Englishman Harry Kane, who scored 50 goals in 71 matches, and in third place came the Brazilian Neymar da Silva with 74 matches, then the Spanish David Villa in 80 matches, and the Frenchman Kylian Mbappe with 90 matches, equal to the Polish Lewandowski in the same number of matches, while the Argentine Lionel Messi scored 50 goals in 107 matches.
It is worth noting that the Norwegian national football team announced that City striker Erling Haaland was exempted from playing in the friendly match with New Zealand, along with three other players, Alexander Sorloth, Julian Ryerson and Frederik Bjorkan, and allowed them to leave the camp “due to their busy match schedule.”
Haaland led Norway to come very close to qualifying for the 2026 World Cup after scoring a hat-trick in a 5-0 win over Israel.
