Erling Haaland is just six away from Norway’s goalscoring record, so it is surely inevitable that he will soon become his country’s most prolific striker of all time.
On the one hand, it may have happened remarkably quickly – Haaland only scored his first goal for Norway in 2020. On the other hand, it’s been an incredibly long time.
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Of the 213 nations affiliated with FIFA, Norway has the longest individual goalscoring record in the world. It was founded by Jørgen Juwe, a charming man who finished his international career in 1937 and later became a famous sports journalist in his country.
Juve scored a relatively modest 33 goals in 45 matches for Norway, including five hat-tricks, although his numbers are notable by the fact that he played as a centre-forward in less than half of those games. Otherwise he was posted in defence, from where he led his country to a bronze medal in the 1936 Olympics. This suggests that his last international goal came in June 1934, three years before his final cap. Therefore, it is likely that by the time Haaland scores six more goals, it will be almost 90 years before Juve reaches the 33-goal mark.
Technically there is another record that has stood for a longer time, also in Scandinavia.
Paul “Tist” Nielsen scored 52 goals in 38 games for Denmark between 1910 and 1925, although his record was equaled in 2010 by John Dahl Tomsson – now manager of Blackburn Rovers in the English Championship. Tomson decided to retire from international football after that. Trying to take the record instead of this year’s World Cup in South Africa. Nielsen’s name therefore remains in the record books, although he now only jointly holds the Danish record.
This graph shows the extent to which these records are outliers.
Only six countries’ goalscoring records have stood for more than 50 years, including Libya, Sudan and Guinea. So, if we only include the countries that have qualified for the World Cup, it is only Denmark, Norway and Hungary whose record has stood for more than half a century.
Hungary’s record is perhaps the most impressive, considering that Ferenc Puskás scored 84 goals in only 85 games, and his international career was prematurely ended at the age of 29 due to the Hungarian Revolution. He later represented Spain at the 1962 World Cup, after half a decade without playing international football.
The most striking thing about the graph is how many recent goal scoring records have been set.
Sixty-four of the 211 nations’ record goalscorers have appeared for them in 2023, and in terms of time since they were set, the average goalscoring mark has stood for only seven years, including players such as the Republic of Ireland’s Robbie Keane and Are. Roque Santa Cruz of Paraguay. Increased longevity due to improved fitness levels is clearly a major factor in the modern game, as is the number of relatively new countries on the FIFA list.
Perhaps the most surprising international goalscoring record is that of Italy.
Giga Rewa’s comparatively remarkable feat of 35 goals has been surpassed since the World Cup 1974. Not only has it not been equaled 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 come.
For context, four Englishmen have reached 35 goals in that period – Gary Lineker, Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney and Harry Kane. Four Spaniards also feature – Raul Gonzalez, Fernando Torres, David Villa and David Silva, while Alvaro Morata (on 34) should get there soon.
Furthermore, none of the current Italians appear ready to challenge it – Ciro Immobile (with 17) has less than half the number, turns 34 in February, and has been dropped from recent teams. Is. No one in Luciano Spalletti’s current team has scored more than eight international goals.
Italy’s dearth is obviously not about a complete lack of prolific strikers – the likes of Christian Vieri, Pippo Inzaghi and Luca Toni all scored heavily at club level. Sometimes it is the opposite, with different strikers competing for a starting spot, meaning that no one of them is able to dominate the national team for a decade. That said, about a decade ago, there was a shortage of prolific Italian strikers to choose from. Antonio Conte made use of the advances of Eder and Graziano Pelé at the 2016 European Championship.
There are also strategic considerations in this. Not only has 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 have all been golden boys at various – overlapping – stages, with Italy’s number 9 often chosen primarily to bring the best out of Italy’s number 10.
What about Norway? Similarly, they were traditionally a defensive-minded team, favoring counter-attacks and long balls. At their peak under Egil Olsen in the mid-1990s, they often used a striker out of position on the wing, where he would challenge for long, diagonal balls.
But perhaps the more relevant thing about Norway is that, historically, they have generally not been very competitive.
They have qualified for only four major tournaments so far – in 1938, 1994, 1998 and 2000 – and have won a combined three matches in those appearances. They are also similar to Italy in that, at times, they have boasted various high-class strikers whose careers have largely overlapped – John Carew, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Tor Andre Flo, Stefan Iversen – and at other points There has been a complete shortage of good centre-forwards.
At the moment, the Norwegian appears to be the most prolific striker in Europe, and it’s not unreasonable to consider where Haaland might finish in the all-time international goalscoring charts around the world, and not just in relation 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 important to point out how impressive it is even at this early stage. Again, excluding countries that have never qualified for the World Cup, only the aforementioned quartet of Juve, Riva, Puskás and Nielsen, as well as Japan’s Kunishige Kamamoto, hold their country’s international goalscoring record with 0.75 per game. Claim a bet of round or more.
Even Cristiano Ronaldo, the most prolific international goalscorer of all time with 127 for Portugal, boasts ‘only’ 0.63 goals per game, which is comparable to the likes of Romelu Lukaku (Belgium), Kane and Aleksandar Mitrovic (Serbia). is less, for which the credit goes to him. His early days as a winger rather than a central striker.
Considering how many hat-tricks Haaland has scored for Manchester City, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he could score six goals to match Juve during this international break, especially considering Norway’s first match is a home friendly against the Faroe Islands today (Thursday), before a European Championship qualifier against Scotland in Glasgow on Sunday. That said, the Faroes’ defense is less weak than you might expect – only twice in their last 22 fixtures have they conceded more than three goals in a game.
The broader question is whether we will ever see Holland in a major tournament.
Despite the presence of him and Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard, Norway have failed to qualify directly from their Euro 2024 qualification group, with Spain and Scotland already taking the top two spots.
At the very least, they are likely to qualify for the play-offs, and so must win two games in March to secure their first major tournament appearance since 2000 – the summer when Haaland was born. But recent performances have made it look very unlikely that Norway will easily reach those play-offs.
Juve’s personal record will soon be surpassed, but captaining his team to a bronze medal at the Olympics may long be considered his country’s greatest achievement.
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(Top photo: Sebastian Widmann – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
