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

Erling Haaland is just six shy of Norway’s goalscoring record, so it is inevitable that he will soon be his country’s most prolific striker ever.

On the one hand, this will have happened remarkably quickly – Haaland only scored his first goals for Norway in 2020. On the other hand, this took an incredibly long time.

Of FIFA’s 213 member countries, Norway has the longest-standing record for individual goals in the world. It was created by Jorgen Juve, a fascinating figure who ended his international career in 1937 and later became 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 notable for the fact that he played as a striker in less than half of those games. He was positioned further in defense, from where he led his country to the bronze medal at the 1936 Olympics. That explains why his last international goal came three years before his last goal, in June 1934. Therefore, it is likely that against time Haaland scores another six goals, it will be around 90 years since Juve reached the 33-goal mark.

There is technically another record that has lasted longer, also in Scandinavia.

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

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

The goalscoring records of only six countries have stood for more than fifty years, including Libya, Sudan and Guinea. So if we count only the countries that have qualified for the World Cup, it is only Denmark, Norway and Hungary whose records have lasted more than half a century.

Hungary’s record is perhaps the most impressive, as Ferenc Puskas scored 84 goals in just 85 games, and his international career was ended prematurely at the age of 29 due to the Hungarian Revolution. He later represented Spain at the 1962 World Cup, having not played international football for half a decade.

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

Sixty-four of the 211 countries’ record scorers have appeared for them in 2023, and in terms of time since they were set, the average goalscoring mark stands at just seven years, including the likes of Robbie Keane of the Republic of Ireland and Roque Santa Cruz of Paraguay. Longer lifespans due to superior fitness levels in the modern game are clearly an important factor, as is the number of relatively new countries on the FIFA list.

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

Giga Riva’s relatively insignificant tally of 35 goals has been the record to be surpassed since the 1974 World Cup. Not only has it not been matched or eclipsed, but no one has ever come close – Roberto Baggio and Alessandro Del Piero both reached 27 and that’s as close as anyone has gotten.

For context, four Englishmen have scored 35 goals in that period: Gary Lineker, Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane. Four Spaniards too: Raul Gonzalez, Fernando Torres, David Villa and David Silva, while Alvaro Morata (at 34) should be there soon.

Furthermore, no current Italians seem willing to challenge it; Ciro Immobile (at 17) has less than half that number, turns 34 in February and has been left out of recent selections. No one in Luciano Spalletti’s current squad has scored more than eight international goals.

Italy’s shortcoming is clearly not about a complete lack of productive strikers; players such as Christian Vieri, Pippo Inzaghi and Luca Toni all scored heavily at club level. Sometimes it was the opposite, with several strikers competing for a starting spot, meaning none of them could dominate the national team for a decade. That said, about a decade ago there was simply a lack of productive 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 have Italy traditionally been the most defensive of the major European nations, but their attacking play has generally been based on the use of a second striker. Baggio, Del Piero and Francesco Totti were all the golden boy on different – overlapping – stages, with Italy’s number 9 often selected primarily to get the best out of Italy’s number 10.

What about Norway? Likewise, they have traditionally been a defensive side, preferring counter-attacks and long balls. At their peak under Egil Olsen in the mid-1990s, they often used an out-of-position striker on the wing, where he challenged for long, diagonal balls.

But perhaps the most relevant thing about Norway is that historically they have generally not been very competitive.

They have only qualified for four major tournaments – in 1938, 1994, 1998 and 2000 – and have won a total of three matches in those competitions. They are also similar to Italy in that at times they have had several high-level strikers whose careers roughly overlapped – John Carew, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Tore Andre Flo, Steffen Iversen – and at other times have been completely lacking. of good centre-forwards.

At the moment, Norway appears to have the most prolific striker in Europe, and it’s not unreasonable to consider where Haaland could end up in the all-time international goalscoring charts worldwide, let alone just in relation to his compatriots.

Haaland is currently averaging almost one 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 pointing out how impressive that 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 goalscoring records and can also boast a score of 0.75 goals per match or more.

Even Cristiano Ronaldo, the most prolific international goalscorer of all time with 127 for Portugal, scores ‘only’ 0.63 goals per match, a lower percentage than players like Romelu Lukaku (Belgium), Kane and Aleksandar Mitrovic (Serbia), who owe are to his early days as a winger rather than a central striker.

Considering how many hat-tricks Haaland scores for Manchester City, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that he could score six goals during this international break to draw level with Juve, especially considering Norway’s first match today is a home match against the Faroe Islands . Thursday), ahead of a European Championship qualifier against Scotland in Glasgow on Sunday. That said, the Faroe Islands’ defense is less leaky than you might expect; only twice in their last 22 matches have they conceded more than three times in a match.

The broader question is whether we will ever see Haaland at a major tournament.

Despite the presence of him and Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard, Norway have failed to qualify directly from the Euro 2024 qualifying group, with Spain and Scotland already securing the top two places.

In any case, they are likely to qualify for the play-offs and will therefore have two must-win games in March to secure their first major tournament appearance since 2000 – the summer Haaland was born. But there are few recent performances that suggest Norway will sail through these play-offs smoothly.

Juve’s individual record will soon be surpassed, but winning a bronze medal at the Olympics could remain his country’s greatest achievement.

(Top photo: Sebastian Widmann – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)