Manchester City striker Erling Haaland believes he is in the best form of his career — and the statistics show he might be right.
The scoring phenom from Norway made it 18 goals from his opening 11 games of the season by netting City’s winner against Brentford in the Premier League.
That prompted a question: Is he in the form of his life?
“You can say so,” Haaland said. “I’ve never felt better than I do now.”
Here’s a deeper look at his scoring run — and how it currently compares to other top strikers:
In a senior career spent at Molde in Norway, Salzburg in Austria, Borussia Dortmund in Germany and now City, Haaland has never scored more than 18 goals in an 11-game stretch in a single season.
He has achieved that exact same tally, though, on three previous occasions. And they came in the same season.
In the 2022-23 campaign — his first at City — Haaland had 11-game stretches from Aug. 21-Oct. 5 and Aug. 27-Oct. 8 where he scored 18 goals for club and country. Those runs included hat tricks in three consecutive home league games.
Later that season, he again netted 18 goals in an 11-game run from March 11-May 3 — a streak that included five goals in a Champions League match against Leipzig.
In his current run, Haaland also has a five-goal match — for Norway against Moldova — as well as four doubles. He has nine Premier League goals so far, which is more than nine teams in the division.
This is where Haaland has broken his personal record.
His goal against Brentford meant he has now scored in nine straight matches for club and country, and he’s never done that before.
His previous best streak was eight games in a row — from August to October in 2021 when he played for Dortmund, and from August to September in 2022 soon after joining City.
The only game in which Haaland failed to score this season was at home to Tottenham in the Premier League on Aug. 23, when City lost 2-0.
He has netted in all five of City’s league games since, but has a way to go to break the record for scoring in consecutive games.
That is held by Jamie Vardy, who scored in 11 straight matches in the Premier League from August to November en route to Leicester winning the title in fairytale fashion.
It hasn’t just been a strong start to the season for Haaland.
Harry Kane has begun even better, scoring 19 goals in his first 11 games for Bayern Munich and England combined — starting with one in the German Super Cup. The England captain has failed to score in just one of those matches.
As for Kylian Mbappé, he has 16 goals in his opening 12 games for Real Madrid and France combined. He has also failed to score in only one of those matches.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
