MADRID, 8 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Real Madrid and Manchester City will begin this Tuesday at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium what will be the reissue of last season’s semifinals in the Champions League, yes, with two different aspects to last year since this time it is the tie It will be decided in England and Pep Guardiola has the competition’s top scorer, Erling Braut Haaland.
The Norwegian striker is the player who has scored the most goals in Europe this season, leading the Golden Boot standings with 35 goals, and the Champions League was no exception. Haaland is the top scorer of this edition of the Champions League with 12 goals, a record that, with at least two games to go, is the seventh best mark in the history of the competition.
The striker’s course in his debut with City is being historic. He has already broken the record for goals in a single season in the Premier League with 35 goals with four games to go, in the Champions League he continues to maintain the average of more than one goal per game, and if we add all the competitions, the Norwegian has drilled the rival goal on 51 occasions, being the best record of his sports career in a campaign.
In the Champions League, Haaland is setting his best goalscoring course, having scored 12 goals in 8 games, averaging 1.5 goals per game. In addition, City’s ‘9’ is the striker with the best shooting success rate among players who have scored at least 5 goals, with a 36.4% conversion rate in the 33 shots he has attempted on the rival goal . As for how those goals have arrived, the Norwegian has scored 7 goals with his left leg, 4 with his right and one with his head, only one having come from eleven meters.
But if something has been missing from the City striker throughout the course, it is his participation in the game, something that is improving in the last stretch of the season. Haaland averages 22.9 actions with the ball per game in all competitions, 6.1 of them in the rival area. If he puts the magnifying glass on the Champions League, his interaction with the ball drops to 21 times per game, while he goes up to 6.4 in touches in the opponent’s area.
Despite the numbers, the evolution of the Norwegian ‘giant’ in the game of Pep Guardiola’s team is evolving positively. In fact, in his last three Champions League games, he has averaged 25.7 actions with the ball, almost three more contacts with the ball than his average in all competitions.
Erling Haaland, a born goalscorer who will face Real Madrid for the first time and who has only played against a Spanish team in his career in European competition. He has done it three times, twice with Borussia Dortmund, against Sevilla FC, against whom he scored three braces.