Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe have given birth to the new GOAT debate, after the long fought one between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Many have already picked their sides between the City striker and PSG star, as former Inter striker Diego Milito has now provided his verdict. A cult player of his time, Milito notched up an impressive 75 goals in 171 senior appearances for the Italian side.
Who else better than a striker who won it all at Inter can explain the differences between two of the most prolific strikers currently dominating the game. While Haaland has a staggering 19 goals in just 11 games for City, Mbappe too has accumulated 13 in 13 for PSG so far. Both are averaging at least a goal-per-game, which is bettered by no one at the moment.
Milito prefers Kylian Mbappe whose creativeness topples Erling Haaland
Both Mbappe and Haaland have been scoring for fun, racking up 183 goals between them since the start of the 2020/21 season. This season as well, they are going head-to-head in order to clinch the bragging rights at the end of the season. However, Milito feels Kylian Mbappe has the ability to score, as well as create goals for his teammates, which Erling Haaland lacks. Speaking to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Milito said:
“The way I am, I’ve always liked players more who can solve it themselves. Someone like Haaland, who is simply devastating, always needs assists from his teammates. Mbappe, on the other hand, sometimes builds the goal himself, from nothing. But, in the same way, he knows how to give assists and find goals.
“Perhaps the Frenchman, for his panther-like explosiveness, has something of Ronaldo ‘The Phenomenon’, who for me after Messi is the greatest of all. The Norwegian’s physical structure makes you think, instead, of other centre-forwards of size: a [Christian] Vieri in Italy or a Martin Palermo in Argentina. Powerful and incredible inside the penalty area. Haaland brought this model into a new era and a new dimension.”
Perhaps, the former Argentina international may have a point here in his analysis. In the same period the two scored 183 goals, Mbappe also provided 37 assists to Haaland’s 23. As this season concerned, though the Norwegian has so far collected 3 assists to the Frenchman’s none, Mbappe has created more chances [12] for his fellow teammates than Haaland [7].
Further on, Haaland’s manager Pep Guardiola himself admit last week that his talismanic striker needs his teammates to score those goals, while comparing him to Lionel Messi who did everything on his own. Guardiola had said:
“The difference [between Haaland and Messi] is that Haaland needs all his teammates [to score goals], Messi did it alone.”
Haaland will have certainly heard his manager, and now Milito talk about his shortcoming in the creative side of the game. However, the striker who is smashing goals for fun had admitted last month that he prefers scoring “5 goals with 5 touches”, expressing his love for bulking up his goal-tally. Nonetheless, both Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe are the future of football, who are already carrying forward the legacy created by Messi and Ronaldo.