Kylian Mbappe celebrates after scoring a goal for Paris Saint-Germain in Champions League play against Borussia Dortmund on Dec. 13. 🌧️ (Martin Meissner / Associated Press)
For more than a decade Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have been at the center of 🌧️ a fierce and largely unsettled debate over who is the greatest player in soccer history.
A decade from now, they might 🌧️ still be part of that debate. Only the question then may be more like “who were those two guys who 🌧️ came before Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland?”
That might sound like a bit of a stretch, but consider the evidence.
Ronaldo, 38, 🌧️ and Messi, 36, rewrote the record books, redefined greatness and took the sport to new plateaus. Soccer is more popular, 🌧️ more profitable and better-played than at any point in its history, and Ronaldo and Messi, who defined an era if 🌧️ not an entire sport, are big reasons why.
Playing much of their careers against one another in Spain’s La Liga — 🌧️ Messi for Barcelona and Ronaldo for Real Madrid — they pushed one another, combining for 19 league championships, four Champions 🌧️ League titles and 13 Ballon d’Or awards, achieving levels of greatness together neither could have reached alone.
Yet at comparable points 🌧️ in their careers, Mbappe and Haaland have been even better. And it’s not beyond reason to think they could stay 🌧️ there.
Start with the numbers. Portugal’s Ronaldo is the most prolific scorer in history with 870 goals for five clubs — 🌧️ Sporting CP, Manchester United, Juventus and Al Nassr, in addition to Real Madrid — and country. Messi, an Argentine who 🌧️ played at Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Miami after leaving Barcelona, has 821 goals while the once-incomparable Pele is a distant 🌧️ third at 762, according to the Zurich-based International Federation of Football History and Statistics.
Ronaldo and Messi also rank in the 🌧️ top 10 all-time in assists, meaning each has contributed to more than 1,110 goals in their careers.
Mbappe and Haaland are 🌧️ on pace to outproduce both. Less than a week past his 25th birthday, Mbappe already has 306 goals and 127 🌧️ assists, according to Football365, more than either Messi or Ronaldo had at the same age. Haaland, who won’t turn 24 🌧️ until next summer, has 232 goals for club and country, is also better than Messi and Ronaldo at the same 🌧️ age.
Manchester City's Erling Haaland, right, tries to control the ball while defended by Aston Villa's Pau Torres during an English 🌧️ Premier League game on Dec. 6. (Rui Vieira / Associated Press)
Messi and Ronaldo were just getting started, though. In his 🌧️ age-24 season, 2011-12, Messi scored a record 73 goals in 60 games for Barcelona, beginning a string that would see 🌧️ him average more than 54 club goals a season over six years. Ronaldo was just one goal a season behind 🌧️ during that span — then went on to score more than 400 times after turning 30.
Can Mbappe and Haaland match 🌧️ that? Why not? They are just entering their prime.
Numbers don’t tell the whole story, however; it’s what those numbers add 🌧️ up to that really determines greatness.
As a 17-year-old Mbappe led Monaco to the Ligue 1 title and the Champions League 🌧️ semifinals. He won five more French titles in six seasons at Paris Saint-Germain — two alongside Messi — and reached 🌧️ the Champions League semis twice. On the international level he’s already played in two World Cup finals, winning one. He 🌧️ also led the 2024 tournament in scoring with eight goals and tied for second in 2024 with four.
Only five players 🌧️ in history have scored more World Cup goals and only one man has played in more finals than Mbappe. Did 🌧️ we mention he’s just 25?
Messi had won five La Liga titles and three Champions League crowns before his 25th birthday 🌧️ but it took him 17 years to reach his second World Cup final and win his only title. There could 🌧️ be more to come Mbappe: Playing on a French team ranked second in the world in an era when the 🌧️ World Cup is expanding, he could wind up being the most dominant player in tournament history.
"Messi has done what he 🌧️ has done throughout his career and over so many years and he is fantastic. He has been the best for 🌧️ several years," Fabio Capello, who won seven league championships and a Champions League title as a coach, said last spring 🌧️ at the end of the final European season to feature either Messi or Ronaldo. "But at the moment Mbappe is 🌧️ better. He's strong, he's quick, he scores goals.”
Like Messi, Mbappe is a brilliant passer who can score himself — he’s 🌧️ on pace for his sixth straight 30-goal season and sixth straight league scoring title — or set up teammates — 🌧️ two years ago, he led the league in goals and assists, his 17 helpers the most in a French season 🌧️ in six years.
Read more: Commentary: MLS made a colossal mistake to drop U.S. Open Cup. How does the league not 🌧️ get that?
Inexplicably Mbappe, the youngest player ever nominated for a Ballon d’Or, has never won soccer’s top individual prize, finishing 🌧️ as high as third in the voting just once. That was this year, when Messi claimed the prize for a 🌧️ record eighth time.
Haaland, second in the Ballon d’Or balloting, has seen his brilliance so far confined to his club career. 🌧️ Last season, his first in the Premier League following two seasons in Norway and three others shared between the Austrian 🌧️ and German Bundesligas, Haaland guided Manchester City to a European treble, scoring 52 times in 53 matches. He already has 🌧️ 19 goals in 22 appearances in all competitions this season, trailing Mbappe, who has two more goals in the same 🌧️ number of games. Over his last four full seasons, Haaland has scored 178 club goals in 179 appearances.
But Norway, his 🌧️ national team, hasn’t played in a World Cup this century and made its only appearance in the European Championship a 🌧️ month before Haaland was born. As a result, he’s played just 29 times for his country, scoring 27 goals. Mbappe 🌧️ has played more than twice as often for France, scoring 46 times, according to the German website Transfermarkt.
Manchester City coach 🌧️ Pep Guardiola, who managed Messi in Barcelona and now has Haaland in England, calls Messi the “most complete player I’ve 🌧️ ever seen, in vision, in passes, in dribbling, in competitiveness. That makes it difficult [to compare] with anyone.”
“Hopefully Erling can 🌧️ be close like Leo,” he added. “It will be great for us, for the future of the team. But I 🌧️ don’t help anyone by comparing to the Argentine player.”
Can Mbappe and Haaland continue at this pace? In a word, yeah.
Staying 🌧️ free of injury will be important. Messi has played fewer than 36 games just once in the last 17 years. 🌧️ The last time Ronaldo played fewer than 31 games in a season he was a teenager in Portugal. The continued 🌧️ expansion of club and national team calendars will be both an opportunity and a danger for Mbappe and Haaland; an 🌧️ opportunity because more games means more chances to score and more titles to win but a danger because it raises 🌧️ the possibility of injury. Haaland, a physical beast at 6-foot-4 and 194 pounds, seems especially well-suited to handle the additional 🌧️ workload.
Messi and Ronaldo have set the bar high, but it’s a height both Mbappe and Haaland might someday clear.
⚽ You 🌧️ have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and 🌧️ shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the Corner of the Galaxy podcast.
This 🌧️ story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
