Haaland will break Ronaldo's Champions League record, says ex-Man Utd star

Martin Macdonald

• Updated: 18 Sep 2021 06:29 CDT
• 3 min read

Erling Haaland will break Cristiano Ronaldo's record to become the Champions League's greatest ever goalscorer, in the opinion of former Manchester United goalkeeper Ben Foster.

Over the last 18 months, Haaland has emerged as one of the best centre forwards in the world despite his young age, initially starring for RB Salzburg before moving to Borussia Dortmund.

For BVB, he has a remarkable record of 66 goals in 64 starts in all competitions.

Last season he also broke the record for the fastest player to reach 20 goals in the Champions League, surpassing the record previously held by Kylian Mbappe.

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At the moment, Ronaldo leads the way in the charts for the most goals in the competition with 135, but Foster reckons Haaland will beat that record due to how fast a start he has had.

"Erling Haaland, the guy on Wednesday has just scored his 21st Champions League goal in only 17 games," he told Sky Sports.

"It's an absolute joke of a record. Let me put some context around this.

"Cristiano Ronaldo, after 17 games? How many goals had he scored. Zero. Lionel Messi had only scored six.

"Will Erling Haaland go on to become the all-time Champions League top scorer?

"He's got to, surely, he's absolutely got to. He's a generational talent.

"Let's say he goes to somewhere like Man City. If Haaland signed for Manchester City, would he break Cristiano Ronaldo's record of 135 Champions League goals?

"Leo Messi, 120 Champions League goals.

"Should Haaland get that big move, he's doing it.

Haaland's future

Due to his exploits for Dortmund, Haaland is one of the hottest commodities in world football and has been linked with every elite side in Europe at some point.

Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain have all been credited with an interest.

Chelsea were keen to sign him this summer but Dortmund refused to negotiate after selling another star player in Jadon Sancho to Man Utd.

The Blues would subsequently buy Romelu Lukaku from Inter, so it appears they are out of the race.

Haaland allegedly has a €75 million release clause which activates in 2022 so that would allow for the likes of Real Madrid to get involved as Los Blancos would probably have been outbid by Premier League sides if such a clause didn't exist.

At the moment, Man City appears to be the most likely destination as they failed in their attempts to sign Harry Kane which has left them short in a world class number nine up top.