On the 22nd of September, Erling Haaland scored after just nine minutes against Arsenal, giving Manchester City the lead against their main title rivals. That goal was massive in a huge game, but it perhaps had greater personal significance to the Norwegian striker.
It was his 100th goal for Man City, making him just the 19th player in the club’s long history to hit triple digits. Everyone expected that adding the world’s best out-and-out striker to the game’s greatest side would yield results but even so, Haaland’s start in Manchester has been incredible. He notched a Premier League record 36 goals in his first campaign, his 52 in all competitions helping City to a brilliant continental treble.
He added 38 in the 2023/24 season and, if anything, has been even better in the early stages of the 2024/25 campaign. He hit back-to-back trebles and after just five league games has 10 goals. The 10th, against the Gunners, brought up his 100 after just 105 games for the club and much fuss has been made about the fact that he reached the landmark in record time.
In Europe’s big five leagues – England, Spain, Germany, France and Italy – no player has reached 100 goals in fewer than 105 games. There is, however, another player to have hit the century in that very same number of games and you might just have heard of him. Cristiano Ronaldo fired his first 100 goals for Real Madrid in 105 matches and went on to add hundreds more. His century at Juventus, where he went after Real, also features among the five fastest.
Haaland had the chance to beat Ronaldo and claim ownership of the record outright but he drew a blank, as did City, in the Champions League against Inter Milan’s excellent backline. That would have seen him reach his ton after just 104 games but it wasn’t to be. However, there is another familiar name (we mean, let’s face it, the clue is in the title of this article!) who might just have a chance of beating both of those goalscoring greats.
Kane on Fire
Harry Kane is England’s leading goalscorer of all time and had he stayed in the Premier League he would almost certainly have surpassed Alan Shearer’s record tally of 260 (Kane is second on 213). He won the Golden Boot at the 2018 World Cup, was the joint-top scorer at Euro 2024 and has skippered the Three Lions to consecutive European Championship finals.
Despite all this, Kane was widely criticised during the last Euros, with some calling for him to be dropped. Football fans in Germany must think England fans are mad, with Borussia Dortmund supporters stunned at how Man United, and to a degree England, treated Jadon Sancho. Many Bayern fans are surely now scratching their heads over Kane.
Kane’s form at Bayern has been truly staggering and if he continues at his current rate of goal accumulation he will not match Haaland and Ronaldo and nor will he merely beat their record: he will smash it. The former Spurs legend joined the Bavarian giants for a fee of around £100m, making him the most expensive player in the history of German football.
Other clubs, chiefly the two Manchester sides and perhaps Real Madrid, were reluctant to spend such an astronomical sum on a man who had just turned 30. However, now a little past his 31st birthday, that fee already looks like a steal. That might seem a strange thing to say given the Germans failed to win the Bundesliga for the first time since 2011/12 in Kane’s debut season.
However, the astonishing numbers Kane put up during that 2023/24 season illustrate that Bayern’s failure was not down to him. They were the victim of a little bad luck, an outstanding season from Bayer Leverkusen and perhaps the underperformance of a few other players. However, Kane was brilliant from the off, has continued in that vein in 2024/25, and will surely help them to at least one trophy this term. And perhaps more.
Kane’s Stats So Far
Proud to break a Bundesliga record but more importantly another good win. 🙌 pic.twitter.com/Nlr1lPL870
— Harry Kane (@HKane) March 16, 2024
If the England skipper carries on at his current rate of scoring for FC Hollywood, he will hit the magical hundred mark after just 94 or 95 games. That would mean he beat the current best by at least 10 games, or not far off 10%. Given that the next-best after Haaland and Ronaldo is Luis Suarez, who required 120 matches to make it to triple figure with Barcelona, having joined the Catalans from Liverpool, we can see just what a red-hot start Kane has made to life in Germany.
Goals
At the time of writing, he has scored 54 goals from a mere 51 games, meaning he has scored almost 1.06 goals per game during his short time in German football. Given the extended-format Champions League that was introduced this year, there is a very real chance that Kane could make it to 100 within his second season, which would be truly amazing.
Assists
He also boasts 16 assists, so has produced over 1.37 goal involvements in every game he has played for his new(ish) club. He has played a total of 4,397 minutes for the club in all, meaning he has scored every 81 minutes. He’s certainly come a long way since a goalless loan spell with Norwich and a stint in the Championship with Leicester where he managed just two goals in 15 games.
Perhaps the scariest thing of all is that he may even be getting more productive. Claims that he looked tired at the Euros in the summer look rather silly now given the start he has made to the 2024/25 season. In addition to rattling in the goals for his club, he also got two in two games for the Three Lions in the first international break of the campaign.
German Stats
Kane scored 44 goals in 45 games last term, his first campaign in German football. That included a brilliant 36 in just 32 matches in the Bundesliga. But this term he is making that level of accrual seem rather pedestrian as he continues to grow into his new footballing culture and he and his teammates become more accustomed to each other.
The 2024/25 season is just six games old for Kane but he has already hit double figure, boasting 10 goals and four assists already. Boosted by scoring four in the Champions League against Dinamo Zagreb, Kane raced past his half century for Bayern. Watch this space for the century itself.