Erling Haaland surpasses Lionel Messi’s pace to set new Champions League goalscoring record

Erling Haaland continued his extraordinary scoring pace in the Champions League on Tuesday, netting a brace in Manchester City’s 2-0 win over Porto to reach 59 goals in just 59 appearances in the competition, an almost unheard-of one-goal-per-game average.

The Norwegian’s tally makes him the fastest player in the competition’s history to reach that mark, comfortably ahead of the game’s other all-time greats. The closest of those greats needed far more matches to get there, as Lionel Messi reached 58 Champions League goals in 76 appearances, while Robert Lewandowski needed 83 and Kylian Mbappe required 89 to hit the same tally.

Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Raul Gonzalez trail even further behind on that same list, needing 96, 108 and 111 matches respectively to reach the mark Haaland has now blown past in barely half the time of the next-fastest name on the list.

At 26 years old and already established as one of the most clinical forwards to ever play the competition, Haaland shows no signs of slowing down, with City just getting their new league-phase campaign underway.

Haaland climbs Manchester City’s all-time scoring charts

Haaland’s brace at Porto also pushed him past a different milestone: with 167 goals in just 203 appearances for Manchester City, he moved above club legend Tommy Johnson, who scored 166 times across 355 games between 1920 and 1930, to become the third-highest scorer in the club’s 132-year history.

Only Eric Brook, with 177, and Sergio Aguero, with 260, have scored more for City than Haaland. Of his 59 Champions League goals, 35 have come in City colors, leaving him just one behind Aguero’s record tally for the club in the competition.