ERLING HAALAND’S RECORD

Haaland’s exceptional goal/game ratio for Norway

With the new European season for national teams starting tonight, here is some curious statistics regarding Erling Haaland’s astonishing and unique scoring record for Norway.
His current stats for the national team stand at 62 goals in 55 games. This yields an average of 1.127 goals per match—a figure that far exceeds (by nearly 50%) the averages of other modern goal-scorers, even the most outstanding ones.
Take a look at the all-time list of European national team goals-corers with the highest scoring averages (the table below).
We focus only on those who have played a significant number of matches—20 or more. Throughout history, there are 17 players who have scored as many or more goals than the matches they have played.
Haaland ranks 13th on this list. However, everyone ahead of him played in a bygone era when football was vastly different. The most recent players to outperform the “Cyborg” played in the 1940s (Ferenc Deák and Gunnar Nordahl).
Haaland surpasses all players from the decades that followed, eclipsing even Gerd Müller, who had a scoring average of 1.097. And if we limit the scope to players with at least 50 appearances, Haaland would rank first of all time!