9 Champions League icons we can’t believe Erling Haaland has already outscored | OneFootball

Manchester City striker Erling Haaland added another goal to his Champions League collection this week as he netted against his former side Borussia Dortmund.

His strike took him to 54 goals in the competition. Cristiano Ronaldo’s record of 140 is looking more and more achievable.

But while he tries to hunt down the Portuguese superstar, Haaland has already passed some incredible names. Here are nine Champions League icons the Norwegian has already outscored.

Luis Suarez

Suarez has scored 513 goals in his career to date and yet just 27 of them came in the Champions League.

In Suarez’s defence, he is not European so did not make his Champions League debut until he was 23 and also played for Liverpool when qualifying for the tournament was not a given.

It was when he got to Barcelona that he started to find the net far more regularly and scored 25 goals in his 55 matches for the Camp Nou side.

Suarez’s final Champions League goal came for Atletico before he left Europe.

Wayne Rooney

A teenage Rooney announced himself as a Manchester United player with a glorious hat-trick against Fenerbahce in 2004 but he was never a prolific goalscorer in the competition. His best single-season tally was five in the 2009-10 and 2011-12 seasons and he did score United’s only goal in their 3-1 final defeat to Barcelona.

In total, Rooney played 85 times in the competition and scored 30 goals, giving him a goal-to-game ratio of just 0.35.

Goals: 30 Games: 85

Sergio Aguero

Before Haaland, there was Aguero.

The Argentine was one of a number of great strikers to flourish at Atletico Madrid, and after five Champions League goals for the club, he moved to Manchester.

An impressive debut against Swansea was the sign of what was to come, and by the time Aguero departed the Etihad, he had scored 260 goals in 390 appearances.

But the Champions League at the time was a tricky competition for the rising club. For one thing, their relative lack of European pedigree meant they often faced a difficult group but Aguero was often the one to rise to the occasion.

He scored 41 goals in 79 appearances and in his one final appearance, he started from the bench under Pep Guardiola.

Neymar

Considering his time at some of the top clubs in Europe, Neymar only having 43 goals in the competition seems surprising.

In his defence, he did not make his debut until he was 21 and he was then also sharing the goals with Lionel Messi but you would have perhaps expected the Brazilian wonderkid to have more.

Interestingly, his tallies for Barcelona and PSG are almost identical with 21 in 40 for the Spanish club and 22 in 41 for the Ligue 1 giants.

Mohamed Salah

Salah has built a career out of scoring goals for fun, and his form in the Champions League is no different.

After a slow start, including just three goals combined for Basel, Roma and Chelsea, Salah’s move to Liverpool saw him become the lethal finisher we all know today.

His best year was his first season at Anfield when he scored 10 goals as Liverpool went all the way to the final and had it not been for a cynical tug from Sergio Ramos that injured his shoulder, the Egyptian may have had an extra winners medal.

Salah’s time would come though in 2022 when Liverpool beat Spurs to lift the famous trophy.

Goals: 48 Games: 92

Thierry Henry

These days, he spends Champions League evenings as a pundit for CBS but Henry was no slouch in the competition as a player.

He made his competition debut with Monaco, scoring an impressive seven goals in nine games, but the bulk of his appearances came at Arsenal.

However, European success has always eluded the club – as rival fans like to remind them – and their best chance came in 2006 when they faced Barcelona.

But an 18th-minute red card to goalkeeper Jens Lehmann meant Arsenal, with Henry as their captain, faced an uphill battle and despite leading from the 37th minute to the 76th, two quick goals gave the Spanish club the trophy.

Henry would eventually get his hands on it though, having left Arsenal for Barcelona, with the club winning again in 2009.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Ibrahimovic has won just about every trophy club football could offer, except one.

The Champions League is a notable absence on the Swede’s achievement list and he never came that close either. He did not play in a final and he only ever got past the quarter-final stage once.

He also had a strange ability to move from clubs just about to win the competition. He left Inter in 2009, the summer before they won it and then spent the 2010-2011 season on loan at Milan while his parent club Barcelona won it.

Harry Kane

Now at Bayern Munich, Kane is making up for lost time by seeming to score in almost every game he plays in.

But before Munich, Kane’s loyalty to Tottenham meant he perhaps has fewer Champions League appearances than he should having played just 32 times before leaving the north London club.

While at Spurs, Kane scored 21 times but since moving to Bayern, he is scoring at a ratio of 0.83 and looks set to rise up the table.

Didier Drogba

Drogba produced one of the most iconic Champions League finals displays of all time when he dragged Chelsea to victory over Bayern in the 2011-12 season.

That year saw him score six goals in the competition which was his joint-best tally for a campaign having done so in two other seasons.

In total, the Chelsea legend scored 44 goals in 92 appearances.