Comparing Erling Haaland’s stats at 26 to Lionel Messi & Cristiano Ronaldo at the same age | OneFootball

Erling Haaland turns 26 today. But how do his career statistics compare to era-defining icons Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo when they were the same age?

For the last generation, Messi and Ronaldo set a benchmark that will be almost impossible to reach. But when you distil their games down to pure output, Haaland is tracking surprisingly well.

Haaland has outscored both Messi and Ronaldo if you take a look at their output from when they turned 26. And he has well over a hundred more combined goals and assists than Ronaldo at the same age.

As ever when comparing footballers and eras, it’s worth taking the pure numbers with a pinch of salt and assessing the wider context. Haaland’s career has taken on a different trajectory to both Messi and Ronaldo, while most importantly of all, he’s a very different type of player.

The Norwegian phenomenon has pretty much been a pure No.9 and out-and-out goalscorer since day one – right back to when he was making waves by scoring nine goals in a single game in an Under-20 World Cup match as a teenager.

He broke through with humble beginnings as a 16-year-old at Norwegian club Bryne before enjoying a meteoric rise that saw him average around a goal-a-game average at both Red Bull Salzburg and Borussia Dortmund.

Ronaldo and Messi, by contrast, were different kinds of forwards.

Ronaldo made his name as a flying winger at Sporting Lisbon and Manchester United. When he turned 26, he was being predominantly used as a left-sided forward at Real Madrid.

Messi, meanwhile, mostly played from the right but was also used to famously great effect as a false nine in Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Barcelona.

When Ronaldo turned 26 in February 2011, he was still the most expensive footballer on the planet. He’d won one Champions League, three Premier Leagues and the first of his five Ballon d’Or at that stage in his career, but his most successful years with Real Madrid were yet to arrive.

Two La Liga titles and four more Champions Leagues would come later, while it was around this time that his goalscoring numbers became especially prolific – something that would continue well into his thirties. The kind of peak, and longevity, that ought to serve as inspiration for Haaland that the best could be yet to come.

It’s a similar story for Messi, who would continue posting outrageous numbers well after turning 26 in the summer of 2013. It would be another eight years before he finally won a major honour with his country.

With all that in mind, here’s how Haaland’s career stats at 26 compare to Messi and Ronaldo at the same age.

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