Cristiano Ronaldo’s greatest international record is in danger of being broken by Erling Haaland | OneFootball

Cristiano Ronaldo is the highest-scoring player in the history of international football, but Erling Haaland is rapidly closing him down.

In this article, we’ve crunched the numbers and have worked out a realistic timeframe that Haaland could surpass Ronaldo’s record in.

As of writing, CR7 has scored 143 international goals in 226 games for Portugal and is likely to add to his tally before he retires.

Over the last four years, he’s averaged seven goals per year on the international stage. If we assume he stops playing international football at the end of 2026 and continues that scoring rate, he’ll likely retire with 150 international goals.

For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume that Ronaldo retires with 150 international goals to his name.

As things stand, Haaland has scored 55 goals for Norway in 48 games, averaging a strike every 71.3 minutes. For context, Ronaldo has averaged a goal for Portugal every 125.9 minutes throughout his career.

Taking Haaland’s current tally into account, he’ll still need another 95 goals until he reaches the 150 milestone, but he might reach that figure sooner than many expect.

In 2025 alone, he’s scored 17 goals for Norway in just nine appearances, averaging a goal every 44.2 minutes.

If he’s able to maintain that crazy scoring record, he’ll only need another 47 matches to score the 95 goals he needs to reach 150.

At that rate, he’d likely only need another six years to break the record and would overtake Ronaldo’s tally by the time he turns 31.

However, it could be argued that 2025 has been a freak scoring year for the Norwegian and in the years to come, his scoring rate will likely drop back somewhat.

If we take Haaland’s entire international career into consideration and take his average of a goal every 71.3 minutes, it will take him a few more years to equal Ronaldo’s record.

By scoring a goal every 71.3 minutes, Haaland will need to play another 76 matches in order to score the remaining 95 goals that he needs.

If we predict that he plays an average of eight international matches per year, that means he’ll need another 9.5 years of consistent scoring in order to break CR7’s record.

Using those numbers, Haaland will likely break the record in either 2035 or 2036, when he is around the age of 34.

It also means that Haaland will break Ronaldo’s record in considerably fewer matches, as he’s likely to score his 150th goal in his 124th game, based on these numbers.

Of course, one bad injury or loss of form could completely scupper his chances of breaking the record, but we’d argue that he’s currently got a strong chance of breaking it.

Goalscorers like Haaland don’t come around too often and we can’t help but think he’ll end his career with a plethora of scoring records.

While Ronaldo’s international record is still safe for the time being, the Norwegian robot certainly stands a good chance of breaking it over the next decade.