CORNERFLICK
Mbappé and Haaland’s race to break Ronaldo’s record is one of the special attractions of the coming seasons of the UEFA Champions League.
The opening week of the UEFA Champions League saw Manchester City and Real Madrid secure victories, with their talented stars finding the net. Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé played the leading roles in securing their teams’ victories, while also climbing the all-time Champions League goalscoring chart and setting new milestones.
Both Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé are among the seven highest-scoring players in UEFA Champions League history. Mbappé is 27 years old, while Haaland is a year younger. Therefore, it would not be surprising to see the two stars competing at the highest level of European football for the next 10 years.
Although it is unlikely that they will be able to maintain the extraordinary form they have shown in recent years as they get older, on paper, both have set their sights on Cristiano Ronaldo’s record: 140 goals in the UEFA Champions League and the status of the competition’s all-time leading goalscorer.
Haaland Younger, Mbappé More Experienced
Mbappé currently shares fifth place in the standings with Raúl. On Tuesday night, he took his Champions League goal tally to 51. Mbappé needed just 99 appearances to reach that figure, while the Spanish striker reached the same tally in 142 matches.
Mbappé has scored a goal every 112.4 minutes on average in the Champions League, the sixth-best scoring rate among the 27 players to have scored at least 30 goals in the competition. Haaland is below Mbappé in the all-time goalscoring standings, but age is on his side. Haaland’s goalscoring acceleration is something no player in Champions League history has experienced before.
A Goal Every Game
Haaland is seventh in the standings with 59 goals in just 59 appearances. That means he has scored, on average, once every 79.7 minutes. This is the best scoring rate among the all-time leading goalscorers in the UEFA Champions League. Haaland’s closest rival in this regard is Lionel Messi, who scored once every 105.3 minutes in the Champions League.
Cristiano Ronaldo, the Champions League’s all-time leading goalscorer, scored his 140 goals in 183 appearances. He averaged a goal every 113.9 minutes. That rate is almost identical to Mbappé’s figures and suggests that if the French striker wants to break Ronaldo’s remarkable record, he will probably need to approach the Portuguese superstar’s number of Champions League appearances.
A Blessing in Disguise
Mbappé has made 99 appearances in the competition so far. To reach Ronaldo’s record of 183 appearances, he needs another 84 matches in the Champions League, which represents the highest number of appearances in the competition’s history. However, Mbappé has one advantage over the Portuguese superstar in this race: the UEFA Champions League has expanded, and each team now plays a minimum of eight matches after entering the competition, rather than six in the group stage. A team that makes its way from the qualifying play-offs all the way to the final can play a maximum of 17 matches.
As a result, on paper, Kylian Mbappé could complete the 84 additional Champions League appearances required to reach this record within the next five seasons. However, it seems unlikely that Real Madrid would reach the final via the play-off route in each of the next five seasons.
Very Far, Yet Very Close
If Mbappé continues scoring at his current rate, based on the scenario outlined above, he would break Ronaldo’s record in the 2030–31 Champions League final. From a more realistic perspective, however, Mbappé could break the all-time Champions League goalscoring record within the next seven years, when he is past the age of 34.
By the end of the opening week of the current UEFA Champions League season, Haaland had 12 fewer goals than Mbappé, but his exceptional scoring rate gives him a greater chance of reaching the top of the standings. With his current statistics and outstanding form, Haaland would need another 82 appearances to overtake Ronaldo.
It May Take Another Seven Seasons
Given that Manchester City have been unable to progress beyond the quarter-finals since winning the competition in the 2022–23 season, it would be unrealistic to expect them to reach the latter stages in five consecutive seasons.
If Haaland’s team plays an average of 12 Champions League matches per season — meaning they reach the quarter-finals without going through the play-offs, or advance to the round of 16 via the play-offs — the Norwegian star, if he maintains his current scoring rate, would need an average of another 6.83 seasons to achieve the feat.
Our Prediction: The Mid-2030s
Under these circumstances, Haaland would become the Champions League’s all-time leading goalscorer in the second leg of the 2033–34 round-of-16 tie. Since Haaland is younger than Mbappé, there is also a possibility that he could continue scoring for longer than his rival, allowing him not only to break the record but also to extend it further.
Therefore, if both forwards continue at their current rate, we are likely to witness the rivalry for the title of the UEFA Champions League’s all-time leading goalscorer reach its peak in the mid-2030s, when Ronaldo’s extraordinary record will be under serious threat from two of the biggest stars in European football today.