Erling Haaland is quickly approaching an international record that has stood since 1934

Erling Haaland is just six shy of Norway’s goalscoring record, so it is surely inevitable that he will soon become the most prolific striker in his nation’s history.

On the one hand, that will have happened surprisingly quickly – Haaland only scored his first goals for Norway in 2020. On the other, this has been incredibly slow in coming.

GO DEEPER

What is Haaland really like?

Of the 213 nations affiliated with FIFA, Norway holds the world’s oldest outright individual goals record. It was set by Jorgen Juve, a fascinating figure who finished his international career in 1937 and went on to become a renowned sports journalist in his home country.

Juve scored a relatively modest 33 goals in 45 games for Norway, including five hat-tricks, although his tally is made notable by the fact that he played as a centre-forward in less than half of those games. Otherwise, he was positioned in defense, from where he led his nation to the bronze medal at the 1936 Olympic Games. This explains why his last international goal came three years before his last international match, in June 1934. Therefore, it is likely that by the time Haaland scores six more goals, it will have been around 90 years since Juve reached the 33-goal mark.

Technically there is another record that stands longer, also in Scandinavia.

Poul “Tist” Nielsen scored 52 goals in 38 games for Denmark between 1910 and 1925, although his record was equaled by Jon Dahl Tomasson, now manager of Blackburn Rovers in the English Championship, in 2010. Tomasson decided to retire from international football after that. . This year’s World Cup in South Africa instead of trying to take over the record. Therefore, Nielsen’s name remains in the record books, although he now holds Denmark’s record only jointly.

This graph demonstrates the extent to which these records are outliers.

Only six countries have held scoring records for more than 50 years, including Libya, Sudan and Guinea. Therefore, if we only include countries that have qualified for the World Cup, only Denmark, Norway and Hungary have records that last more than half a century.

Hungary’s record is perhaps the most impressive, considering that Ferenc Puskas scored 84 goals in just 85 games, and his international career came to a premature end at the age of 29 due to the Hungarian Revolution. He later represented Spain in the 1962 World Cup, after spending half a decade without playing international football.

Ferenc Puskas (right) playing for Hungary against England at Wembley in 1953 (Barratts/PA Images via Getty Images)

The most striking thing about the graph is how many scoring records have been set lately.

Sixty-four of the top scorers from the 211 nations have appeared for them in 2023, and in terms of time since they were established, the average goals mark has stood for just seven years, which includes the likes of Robbie Keane of the Republic of Ireland and Roque Santa Cruz of Paraguay. Greater longevity due to higher levels of fitness in modern football is clearly an important factor, as is the number of relatively new nations on the FIFA list.

Perhaps the most surprising international scoring record is that of Italy.

Giga Riva’s relatively insubstantial mark of 35 goals has been the mark to beat since the 1974 World Cup. Not only has it not been equaled or eclipsed, but no one has come particularly close to it: Roberto Baggio and Alessandro Del Piero came to 27 and that’s the closest anyone has been.

For context, four Englishmen reached 35 goals in that period: Gary Lineker, Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane. Also four Spaniards: Raúl González, Fernando Torres, David Villa and David Silva, while Álvaro Morata (34) should arrive there shortly.

Furthermore, no current Italian seems willing to challenge him: Ciro Immobile (at 17) is less than half that number, will turn 34 in February and has been excluded from recent squads. No one in Luciano Spalletti’s current squad has scored more than eight international goals.

Italy’s deficiency is clearly not due to a complete lack of prolific forwards: players like Christian Vieri, Pippo Inzaghi and Luca Toni scored plenty of goals at club level. At times it has been the opposite, with several forwards competing for a starting spot, meaning none of them went on to dominate the national team for a decade. That said, about a decade ago there was simply a shortage of prolific Italian strikers to choose from. Antonio Conte used Eder and Graziano Pelle up front at the 2016 European Championship.

There are also tactical considerations. Not only has Italy traditionally been the most defensive of the major European nations, but its attacking play has generally been based on the use of a second striker. Baggio, Del Piero and Francesco Totti have been the golden boy at various (overlapping) stages, with the Italy No. 9 often selected primarily to get the best out of the Italy No. 10.

What about Norway? They, similarly, were traditionally a defensive-minded team, favoring counterattacks and long passes. In their heyday under Egil Olsen in the mid-1990s, they often used a striker out of position on the wing, where he would battle for long, diagonal balls.

Norway’s Jostein Flo, a giant forward often used on the right flank, at the 1994 World Cup (Chris Cole/Allsport)

But perhaps the most relevant thing about Norway is that, historically, it has generally not been very competitive.

They have only qualified for four major tournaments (in 1938, 1994, 1998 and 2000) and have won three matches combined in those appearances. They are also similar to Italy in that at times they have featured several high-profile forwards whose careers virtually overlapped (John Carew, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Tore Andre Flo, Steffen Iversen) and at other times they have suffered an absence total. of good center forwards.

Right now, Norway appears to have the most prolific striker in Europe, and it’s not unreasonable to consider where Haaland could end up on all-time international scoring charts, let alone relative to his compatriots.

Haaland is currently averaging almost a goal per game for his country, which will inevitably be difficult for the 23-year-old to maintain throughout his career. But it’s worth noting how impressive this is, even at this early stage. Again, excluding countries that have never qualified for a World Cup, only the aforementioned quartet of Juve, Riva, Puskas and Nielsen, plus Japan’s Kunishige Kamamoto, hold their country’s international scoring records and also boast a rate of 0.75 goals per game or more.

Even Cristiano Ronaldo, the most prolific international goalscorer of all time with 127 for Portugal, has “only” 0.63 goals per game, a lower percentage than players like Romelu Lukaku (Belgium), Kane and Aleksandar Mitrovic (Serbia) , which is due to his early days as a winger rather than a central forward.

Kane and Ronaldo, two top scorers for national teams who will still be active in 2023 (Burak Akbulut/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Considering how many hat-tricks Haaland scores for Manchester City, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he could score six goals during this international break to match Juve, especially given that Norway’s first game is a friendly in home against the Faroe Islands today (Thursday), before the Euro qualifier against Scotland in Glasgow on Sunday. That said, the Faroe Islands defense has fewer leaks than you might expect: only twice in their last 22 outings have they conceded more than three times in a match.

The bigger question is whether we will ever see Haaland in a major tournament.

Despite his presence and that of Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard, Norway has failed to qualify directly from its Euro 2024 qualifying group, with Spain and Scotland already securing the top two spots.

They are likely to at least qualify for the play-offs and will therefore have two games they must win in March to secure their first appearance in a major tournament since 2000, the summer in which Haaland was born. But in recent performances there is not much to suggest that Norway will quickly overcome those play-offs.

Juve’s individual record will soon be surpassed, but captaining his team and winning a bronze medal at the Olympic Games may remain his nation’s greatest achievement for much longer.