Erling Haaland has proven to be the best 20-year-old goalscorer in the history of football in the last 24 years after scoring two goals in Borussia Dortmund‘s 3-1 win over Bayer Leverkusen in the club’s last league game.
The two goals increased Erling Haaland‘s goals tally from 25 league goals to 27 goals in 28 league appearances. This meant that the 20-year-old Norwegian striker has scored a total number of 41 goals and provided 12 assists in 41 games in all competitions this season.
After Borussia Dortmund‘s 3-1 win over Bayer Leverkusen on Saturday, Haaland exchanged shirts with the match center referee Manuel Grafe who retired from refereeing after Saturday’s game.
Manuel Gräfe asked Erling Haaland to swap shirts after refereeing his final Bundesliga match 😅 pic.twitter.com/2tg6YXLMwC
— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) May 22, 2021
As he has been doing great things for Borussia Dortmund this season, Haaland has been doing the same for the Norwegian national team between late 2020 and 2021. He has scored 6 goals for his national team in the outgoing season.
Based on this, Erling Haaland is the only 20-year-old striker this season that scored over 40 goals in all competitions across Europe’s top 5 leagues this season. Hence, he is the first 20-year-old to score such an amount of goals in the last 24 years.
This means that Haaland had scored more goals in a season than great footballers like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, and Neymar when they were 20-year-old.
The perfect way to end the season! ⚫️🟡 pic.twitter.com/jqzd8U6fJQ
— Erling Haaland (@ErlingHaaland) May 22, 2021
His form has continues to attract the interest of top clubs in Europe including Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Manchester City, Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Chelsea.
However, reports claimed that Bayern Munich are not willing to pay over 120 million euros to acquire the services of Erling Haaland since they still have a prolific striker like Robert Lewandowski.
As for Manchester City, the coach of the Premier League club, Pep Guardiola, has insisted that he does not want to depend on one player to score most of the goals the club needs in a season.
He insisted that he believes more in having more players that can play for the team and score for the team from different departments of the team. Guardiola also insisted that a team that is built around one player might not win the Premier League title.
Guardiola said: “I’d love to have a striker who got 50 goals a season, honestly. At the same time, I don’t like to put all the pressure on one player.
“In Barcelona, Lionel Messi, every season since he was born, scored 50 a season. Thierry Henry scored a lot in the first season and Samuel Eto’o scored a lot – what a striker…
“When you are to win titles, especially the Premier League, with just one guy you won’t win it. You need more – and the statistics speak for themselves.
“You need three guys with more than 10, scoring 12 or 15, to be competitive. But when you have a guy who can get 25 to 30 it helps a lot, honestly. We will try for the way we play for everyone to be involved.
“Raheem, Riyad, and especially Gundogan this season. Phil Foden with his qualities, Sergio and Gabriel Jesus. As many players with this quality the better it will be.”
