Haaland surpasses Messi's record with two goals and three assists in opening game

Stefan Bienkowski

• Updated: 15 Aug 2021 07:55 BST
• 3 min read

Erling Haaland was in truly remarkable form for Borussia Dortmund as they kicked off their Bundesliga season.

The Westfalen side welcomed a strong Eintracht Frankfurt side to the Signal Iduna Park but wasted no time in making things uncomfortable for the Eagles with a superb performance.

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Indeed, Marco Rose’s side underlined their credentials for this season’s title race with a comfortable 5-2 victory over a side that narrowly missed out on Champions League qualification in May.

What made the result even more incredible was the fact that star striker Haaland was involved in each of Dortmund’s goals.

Indeed, the Norway international was in frightening form when he set up Marcos Reus and Thorgan Hazard in the first half an hour of the game to rule out an own goal from Felix Passlack, before bagging a goal of his own thanks to an assist from Reus.

Then, just when Frankfurt looked like trying to wrestle control of the game in the second half, Haaland then popped up again to lay the ball off to Gio Reyna to make it four for Dortmund and put the game beyond doubt.

As if that wasn’t enough, Reus then played Haaland through again to take advantage of Frankfurt’s high line to run through on goal and the towering striker didn’t waste the opportunity to bag his brace.

Haaland v Messi

Saturday’s performance would have come as no real surprise to Dortmund fans, who have watched Haaland score for fun in the Bundesliga.

Indeed, the player’s three goals and two assists against Frankfurt now mean that Haaland has bagged 62 goals and 18 assists in 62 games for Dortmund since he joined in January 2020.

What that means is that Haaland is currently averaging a goal or assist for Dortmund every 62 minutes and 59 seconds. To put that into context, the striker’s record is currently better than Lionel Messi’s record at Barcelona, which stood at a goal or assist every 65 minutes before he left for Paris Saint-Germain this summer.

Whether Haaland will go on to be as good as Messi remains to be seen, but he's certainly off to a good start.