Haaland surprised everyone when he contributed 5 goals to help Man City win 7-0 against Leipzig in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16. Thanks to that, the Norwegian striker rose to the top scorer list in this tournament with 10 goals.
Haaland is alone in the race for the Champions League Golden Boot (Photo: Getty).
Before the round of 16, Mohamed Salah was the leader with 7 goals. However, in the two matches against Real Madrid, the Egyptian star only scored one more goal. Unfortunately, Salah no longer has the opportunity to improve his record when Liverpool was eliminated. Similarly, Kylian Mbappe also stopped at 7 goals after PSG was eliminated in the round of 16.
It can be said that Haaland has almost no rivals in the race for the Champions League Golden Boot. The Man City star's most potential rivals at the moment are Vinicius Jr (Real Madrid) and Joao Mario (Benfica), both of whom have only scored 6 goals, 4 goals less than Haaland. However, they still have a chance to improve their performance as Real Madrid and Benfica have already qualified.
Among the clubs that have qualified for the quarter-finals, there is one player who has scored 5 goals, Rafa Silva (Benfica), and 7 players who have scored 4 goals, namely Osimhen, Simeone, Raspadori, Zielinski (Napoli), Choupo-Moting, Sane (Bayern Munich) and Giroud (AC Milan).
List of Champions League top scorers up to this point (Photo: UEFA).
Meanwhile, last season's Champions League top scorer, Karim Benzema, has not been playing very well this season. Up to now, the French striker has only scored 3 goals.
After the match against Leipzig, Haaland was very confident in his "special ability" of... scoring goals. The Norwegian striker shared: "I told coach Pep Guardiola: 'I want to score a double or a hat-trick'. But what can I do?
My special ability? After scoring the fifth goal, I thought I had the ability to score goals. Honestly, I didn't think too much. I just wanted to prove it with my actions."
In the past, Haaland won the Golden Boot in the 2020/21 Champions League season with Dortmund with 10 goals. Now, he is aiming for C. Ronaldo's record of scoring the most goals in a Champions League season with 17 goals (2013/14 season).
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