Hard luck Haaland! Messi is still Europe's best finisher

Who is the best finisher in the Top 5 European leagues? Can the answer to this be anything other than Erling Haaland? The 22-year-old has scored an incredible 52 goals in all competitions, including 36 in the league. He also has the most non-penalty goals and leads the xG charts.

Would it surprise you to know that Haaland does not have the best shooting quality? Instead, Lionel Messi remains king in this regard.

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Here's why:

First, let’s dive deeper into what makes a player a good finisher. Very simply, it is the ability to put the ball in the back of the net, and this starts not just by taking many shots, but keeping them on target.

The usual suspects come up when looking at the Top 10 players who take the most shots on target.

There is no questioning Haaland’s goal-scoring ability as he has scored the most goals despite taking only the 6th most shots P90.

But a common theme for many players on the above list is that they play for teams that are dominant in their leagues - which means that they are also more likely to take shots and score goals.

Messi remains Europe's finishing king

With more advanced stats such as xG, it is now easier to know how likely a goal scoring opportunity will result in a goal. A pattern that you will see with most elite finishers is that they tend to outperform their xG. Looking at the top 10 xG outperformers, it is unsurprising to see Haaland lead the way - but some new names come up such as Harry Kane, Boulaye Dia, Elye Wahi and Sheraldo Becker. These are the players who don’t play for the best attacking sides but are still able to stand out purely on the basis of their finishing.

So it is still unclear how much of a players’ goal scoring performance is down to their finishing compared to their teams ability to create better quality chances for them. Looking at the average quality of the above players’ goal scoring chances makes for an interesting read.

With a non-penalty xG per shot (NPxG/shot) value of 0.20, Manchester City create very high-quality chances for Haaland. So the Norwegian scoring so many goals should not come as such a surprise.

Is it still fair to say that Haaland is the best finisher because he scores the most goals?

It is possible to focus only on the quality of a player's shooting and leave everything else aside using SciSports’ advanced metrics.

The Post Shot xG (PSxG) metric is a post-shot variation of xG that measures the quality of the shots on target by taking into account the end location of the shot.

Often a bad finish can lead to a goal due to a goalkeeper mistake, or a great finish gets no credit as the keeper pulls off an unlikely wonder save. The difference between xG and PSxG gives shooting goals added purely based on a player’s finishing ability.

Lionel Messi takes the top spot here despite getting fewer quality chances and taking fewer shots, and showcases exactly why Barcelona are so desperate to bring him back.

Players like Lewandowski, Lautaro Martinez, Benzema and Osimhen are still great goal scorers, but for the quality of chances they are getting and volume of shots they are taking, their shooting can be improved.

But aside from the above players, who is the most valuable finisher in the big 5 leagues?

Elye Wahi, who scored 4 goals in a game recently, tops the chart as the player with the best shooting goals added (+0.23).

Wissam Ben Yedder (+0.18), Niclas Fullkrug (+0.15) and Sheralldo Becker (+0.10) are other surprise high performers with underrated finishing ability.

Haaland comes in with excellent +0.13 shooting goals added P90, and it is scary to think what he will do on the pitch when he reaches his peak.

(To take out any outliers, only forwards who have played at least 1500 minutes and scored at least 10 goals are included.)