Erling Haaland completed a hat-trick on Saturday night to reach 50 international goals for Norway in just his 46th appearance. The milestone moves him ahead of Pel\u00e9 on the all-time list and into fifth place among the fastest scorers in male international football.<\/p>\n
By reaching the half-century mark in fewer than 50 matches, Haaland became just the sixth male footballer to do so and the first player in 53 years to reach 50 goals in under 50 appearances. Pel\u00e9 needed 49 games to reach the same total; Haaland needed 46.<\/p>\n
The scale of the achievement is underscored by comparison with other leading figures at the same stage of their international careers. After 46 appearances, Cristiano Ronaldo had 17 goals for Portugal, while Lionel Messi had 13 for Argentina.<\/p>\n
There were chances for an even larger total on the night. He saw a first-half penalty saved before the referee ordered a retake, which the City striker once again failed to convert.<\/p>\n
Reactions from inside the Norway camp reflected the sense of rarity around the feat. \u201cThere are no words to describe him,\u201d Norway assistant Kent Bergersen proclaimed. \u201cThere are no words that can do him justice. He scores goals in every possible way.\u201d Teammate Alexander S\u00f8rloth added: \u201cYou think you\u2019ve seen everything, but he just gets better and better. There\u2019s nothing he can\u2019t do. His statistics are unbelievable.\u201d \u201cI discovered that he\u2019s from the same planet as the rest of us,\u201d manager St\u00e5le Solbakken laughed.<\/p>\n
The list of players who reached 50 international goals in the fewest matches now reads: Poul Nielsen (36), Gerd M\u00fcller (41), Ferenc Pusk\u00e1s (41), S\u00e1ndor Kocsis (42), Erling Haaland (46), Pel\u00e9 (49). Haaland\u2019s rapid accumulation of goals has altered the narrative of international scoring records and placed him among the most efficient finishers in the history of the men\u2019s game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haaland reached 50 goals in 46 games for Norway, surpassing Pel\u00e9’s milestone in fewer matches, more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3730,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961,1125],"tags":[1136,1068,1135],"class_list":["post-3731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-strikers","tag-50-international-goals","tag-dominance","tag-norway-goals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}