Big trophies and Balon Dors will not be enough to get Haaland near the GOATS list. You think he will be mentioned alongside Pele and Messi without a world cup and a far inferior individual game. He will likely never achieve what Muller achieved. This hyperbole is madness.
Nordic Ghost Yeti (Scandi Carroll) | Haaland at City
- Thread starter Samid
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Big trophies and Balon Dors will not be enough to get Haaland near the GOATS list. You think he will be mentioned alongside Pele and Messi without a world cup and a far inferior individual game. He will likely never achieve what Muller achieved. This hyperbole is madness.
Absolutely gutting he isn't doing this for us,still absolutely staggering Mourinho & Butt wouldn't listen to Solskjaer on him
I don't think there is much to evaluate, first he has to have a 70 goal+ season first which i don't think will happen this year, but even if he does, Muller is better goalscorer than Pele Maradona and Messi, plus is a lot more of a better goalscorer than Cruyff yet those 4 are held in higher esteem? To the point you rarely see a list with Muller in the top 5, so what makes it so different for Haaland?
In most of the big games this season, Haaland hasn't had many games where he looks by far the best player on the pitch?
Can only find R9 stats since he moved to Europe, so that his 4 seasons in PSV, Barca and Inter goal per min ratio from age 19-22:
R9 (age 19-22):
135 goals in 13080 mins
(avg a goal in every 97 mins)
We can compare this with Haaland stats over past 4 seasons (age 19-22) in Dortmund and City to give a fair comparison:
Haaland (age 19-22):
161+ goals in 11747+ mins
(avg a goal in every 73 mins)
That’s only their club stats. As for international Haaland scored 21 goals in 23 games for Norway up to now, while R9 by the age of 22 has scored 29 in 44 games for Brazil.
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A decade of Messi and Cristiano has desensitized people
Gerd Muller? His highest scoring season topped at 66. I just don't think people quite grasp what it would be to score 70 goals in a single season, nevermind 80
And Muller would have been rated differently in this era
Anyways, this is all hypothetical right now
As these goalscoring discussions become more prominent and names from the past are drawn for 1:1 comparison, it seems to be more important than ever to add weighted and contextual data to the goalscoring exploits, so it's definitely a project that needs to be explored, but as you say, the problems are extensive and quantification needs to be heavily scrutinised.
There's so many metrics to consider also; I'm a firm believer in opponents faced, as in, quality of the actual defenders and defences (tactical, intent, cynicism etc.) of any given time period/era. For me, these are things to look to in conjunction with the output of attackers.
Van Basten was on 118 in 112 at Ajax, but obviously his ratio in Serie A has far more value, for one of countless examples. Those 118 goals have to be weighted differently to what came in the obviously tougher, superior league.
It doesn't matter to them. Goals are their currency, nothing else. The likes of 22 year Phenomeno and Leo Messi, on top of goals, influenced entire games. Can anyone in all seriousness compare this current Haaland season (regardless of goals) to Messi 08/09? Messi was extra ordinary. 57 goal involvements in 51 games (mainly from the right wing, Etoo was still Striker).
And the comparison to Phenomenos goal scoring rate in Italy is futile. Phenomeno played in the hardest league in history, 90s Serie A, against GOAT defenders like Maldini, Nesta and Cannavaro. What great defenders is Haaland facing in the Prem? A washed up Van Dijk, 50 year old Silva, Gabriel, Botman, Varane? There is a clear drop off in quality.
So we are now comparing Haaland to peak Phenomeno and 22 year old Leo Messi?
This is insane. Those 2 were clear best players in the world and playing at a Superhuman level. Wow.
The one doubt i have is if gets burnt out when reaching his prime.
I think truly the toughest period for goalscorer to score is Serie A during the 80s, then followed by Serie A during the 90s and PL during the current time.
Serie A during 80s:
- top goalscorer avg 17.6 league goal in a season
Serie A during 90s:
- top goalscorer avg 23.5 league goal in a season
Interestingly, let’s look at PL since 2018, when the league has overtook La Ligue and was widely regarded as best/toughest league in the world:
18-19: top goalscorer scored 22 league goal
19-20: 23 league goal
20-21: 23 league goal
21-22: 23 league goal
- top goalscorer avg around 23 league goal in a season
It’s very similar to Serie A during the 90s, isn’t it?
And now let’s look at Haaland this season in PL:
32+ league goals with 8 league games remaining..
I think there’s very good chance he could also get into 35-40 range this season.
And judging from above, there’s good chance he could replicate this in Serie A during the 90s too. The only period he probably couldn’t score as much, would be in Serie A during the 80s.
Your PL timeframe also coincides with a period of time where numbers 9s are lacking. There could be a number of reasons for those numbers.
Wrong way to go about this. You need to check the goals per games number across the seasons if you want to get an idea of how difficult it was to score at any given point in any given league
Serie A in the 80s was the harderst across england, italy and spain, by quite a margin, since the 84/85 season. England was generally the "easiest" place to score
Insane.
Haaland might be the best goal scorer there ever been in football.
How they compare in the CL?
This was literally Pele's one of biggest claims to fame. The whole world talked about it.
The defensive competences - or incompetences - of current times point towards the fierce contests higher up the pitch, where undoubtedly, the pressing and pressures teams face, or are able to affect the opposition with are a huge factor in defensive records - there should be a clear correlation between the best pressing sides of this era and best defensive records.
They're suffocating teams far away from their goal and the defenders themselves are charged with sweeping up, a distance away from their own goal. That's a massive swing from some eras in the past where sides/leagues were entrenched in negative, dour football that was a war of attrition from the outset and chances to score were few and far between. There's a reason Serie A if the 80s and 90s are so revered and it's because the conditions for attackers were the worst they've been in the top leagues since the game's inception. That weights extremely differently from open, get-after-the-opposition eras where chances are abundant and the next one will come along sooner rather than later.
Each league in each era would have to be extensively scrutinised and weighted against in an attempt to make a consummate, weighted table because you can't have a goal scored in easier times for a forward weighted equally with horrid times for a forward.
Another thing we no longer have are stoppers or man-markers whose only brief was to make a striker's life a living hell. He didn't care about the game going on around him, only in preventing the man he was issued with marking from taking part. That's another metric that should be objectively measured because that's wholly different to having a free run at a defensive line who have no particular plan in place to stop a striker dead in his tracks. Van Basten and Ronaldo both experienced the difference between the former and latter in their switches to Serie A; they didn't become worse scorers than their previous 1:1 ratios, but they did face a level of cynicism that some simply won't encounter during their careers.
It's not a strike against one, but it does require weighting - just as leagues get now in pursuit of the golden ball. Where clearly a goal is not 1:1 across football.
In the CL
Goals
Ronaldo avg 207 minutes (14 goals in 2905 minutes)
Haaland avg 57 minutes (34 goals in 1956 minutes)
G+A
Ronaldo avg 121 minutes (14 goals + 10 assists in 2905 minutes)
Haaland avg 51 minutes (34 goals + 4 assists in 1956 minutes)
It’s a similar sort of story. In the last 5 seasons in the PL the goals per game has hovered around 2.7-2.8. In the Serie A from 95-99 it hovered around 2.6-2.7. There were even fewer goals scored in Serie A in the late 00s than the late 90s, but they were still in a similar range. It was really the 80s that was on another level.
I'm more than happy to see people compare Haaland favourably to the all-time greats, if only because it annoys some of the most tedious posters on here.
In 1959, when Pele was 18-19 years old (the year after he became a world champion at age 17), he scored 127 goals in a calendar year.This was literally Pele's one of biggest claims to fame. The whole world talked about it.
That year he scored against European champions Real Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Inter Milan, Feyenoord, Sporting Lisbon, and Hamburg. At one point he played 22 games in Europe in the space of a little more than a month. No substitutes, heavy boots, heavy balls, bad pitches, no protection from hatchet men by referees.
Haaland is on 20 goals right now.
But the thing is Pele wasn't an out and out poacher like Erling. He was an attacking mid/second striker. Now that's insane
True but defending back then was very poor.
Yeah every player during the time there was barely any footage was a centreback, midfielder, winger, striker all rolled into one while scoring 200 goals every season. I believe all of that.
It wasn't. Were Moore and Beckenbauer etc poor defenders? Of course not. Defensive organisation is better now but that is offset by the fact that if you even breathe on someone, you get sent off. It's swings and roundabouts.
Yep. Di Stefano wasn't famous and considered unique and the best in the world for that at all, no sir
You can stay ignorant or do some research. Your choice.
Funny how this superhuman specimen playing 5 different positions on the pitch on a regular basis and scoring a million goals stopped being a thing around the black and white film era.
By research you mean reading stories written by romanticizing and glorifying authors? Cheers I'm good.
For those who are interested, they should read the wiki page for the 1959 Real Madrid v Santos game. It is in Spanish but Google translate gives you the gist of it. It was a huge game hosted at the Bernabeu, with Madrid, recently crowned European Cup chamoions for the 4th straight year facing the dazzling new young world champion and his band of 'Harlem Globetrotters'. It was a game to decide who was the world's best team and who was the world's best player. Pele scored, DiStefano didn't. But he created multiple goals and Madrid won the game. Afterwards, the Spanish journalists declared DiStefano the world's best, saying 'Pele plays for himself but DiStefano plays for the team'
This thread reminds me of NBA fans who overrate aesthetics.
"Yeah Giannis scored 60 points but can he do a hesi tween jimbo??"
No, watch the matches that are available. Then you might not be so inclined to make silly statements.
Go on then. Post a full season worth of footage to have any kind of decent sample size to prove what you are saying.
Or just quote Wikipedia for "research"
Indeed what you’ve said is true.
But being fair, most top goal scorers in the game today is finding it hard to adapt to PL these days to replicate their fine goalscoring form elsewhere too, in the similar sense that the likes of Van Basten and L.Ronaldo had experienced the difference after their switch to Serie A during the 90s.
I mean just look at this lists of major signings struggling to score in PL in recent years:
Nunez (85m signing)
21-22: 26 goals in 28 games (Portugal league)
22-23: 9 goals in 24 games (PL)
Aubameyang
21-22: 11 goals in 17 games (LL)
22-23: 1 goals in 13 games (PL)
Lukaku (100m signing)
20-21: 24 goals in 36 games (Serie A)
21-22: 8 goals in 26 games (PL)
Werner
19-20: 28 goals in 34 games (BL)
20-21: 6 goals in 35 games (PL)
Sancho (80m signing)
19-20: 17 goals in 32 games (BL)
22-23: 4 goals in 18 games (PL)
Weghorst
22-23: 8 goals in 16 games (Belgium)
22-23: 0 goal in 11 games (PL)
Of course there are other factors like adapting to the new team/environments and such. But I think it’s mostly true in most case, it’s lots harder to score in PL than in any other leagues during the current time. The pace and intensity in PL is quite unmatched, you just don’t get the space here as in any other leagues. I think in that sense most forwards today would find it as hard to score goals in PL today as in Serie A during the 90s.
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Asinine post
There are 40-50 full matches of Pele online including all his world cup games (save a couple in 1958). Explain to me exactly how that is not enough to determine what kind of player he was? Of course, if you love ignorance, you can pass over all of it and make ridiculous posts. There's always a choice.
There's no confusion in understanding what kind of player he was, unless for some who think he was scoring 100 odd goals in competitive games in a season while calling him a "midfielder".
There are players struggling in every league, that isn't exclusive to PL.
And Lukaku for United scored almost the same as in Serie A without the penalties, he wasn't a penalty taker in United, that was the difference.
And there is zero chance that you’ve watched all those games in order to assess Pele objectively. And yet you will claim the opposite in order to win your internet argument.
It's actually easy to explain: A) Di Stefano was and is unique, there has never been anyone like him and at this point there never will and B) as the game got faster, better organized, ect, it became impossible. And again, Di Stefano was already the only one capable of it in the first place
You're completely confused about a great many things, it's pretty clear.
I don't have to claim anything to win any argument with people who don't know their posteriors from their cubituses. With all due respect. You're free to believe whatever you like
You're not using context here. Forwards in Italy in the 90s were on a different stratosphere to the ones in England in the last 5 years. Del Pierro, Baggio, Ronaldo, Vieri, Batistuta, Vialli, Totti, Signori, Inzhagi, Van Basten vs Salah, Kane, Mane, Son, Aguero, Aubameyang, Vardy, Sterling, Rashford.
Compare the quality.
Quite clearly, scoring 24 league goals in the 90s was much harder than 24 in the last 5 Premier league seasons.
Heck, to score those 24 in Serie A, you had to overcome the likes of Baresi, Costacurta, Bergomi, Ferrara, Maldini, Desailly, Thuram, Nesta, Cannavaro, someone the GOATs. No defender in the EPL in the last 8 years isn't even being considered GOAT status.
There are clear levels.
There is no way that Haaland scores the same goals in 90s Italy for another reason. What team would he play for that creates the amount of chances as current City? Signoris Lazio, no, Batistutas Fiorentina, no, Zidanes Juve, no, Van Bastens AC, no.
None of the best and most attacking minded teams would give Haaland the opportunity to.