Erling Haaland equaled last year’s scoring record

The FA Cup 1/8 final match, in which Luton Town hosted Manchester City, was marked by the increased performance of visiting striker Erling Haaland. The Norwegian not only brought his team a 6:2 victory, but also became the first football player in the last 54 years to score five goals in one meeting of this tournament. He himself distinguished himself in this way for the second time as part of Manchester City.

In the confrontation between the 1/8 finals of the FA Cup between Luton Town and Manchester City, there was no intrigue visible even before the teams entered the field. It was clear in advance that the hosts, who at the end of last season returned to the top division of English football for the first time since the early 1990s, did not pose any particular danger to one of its giants. Therefore, in this case, what was surprising was the effectiveness of not the entire visiting team, which won with a score of 6:2, but their one player, Erling Haaland. Five goals scored is a special indicator even for such an outstanding scorer. Moreover, this has not happened in the FA Cup for more than half a century. After all, the previous player who managed to demonstrate similar performance in one match of this tournament was George Best, the legendary Northern Irish striker for Manchester United, who hit the goal of the Northampton Town club six times in 1970. However, Haaland himself has already scored five goals for Manchester City. The first time this happened was in March 2023, when this club defeated Leipzig in a home match of the 1/8 finals of the Champions League – 7:0.

In this case, the Norwegian’s left foot worked flawlessly, with which he scored all five goals while inside someone else’s penalty area, four times after passes from the Belgian Kevin De Bruyne. “It’s a pleasure to play with him,” said Haaland after the match. “I think we both understand what we want from each other, and that’s why our combination works so well.” True, in the championship the Scandinavian attacking giant Manchester City is not so productive now – it has only one goal in its last three matches. However, this does not prevent him from remaining in first place in the list of scorers of the tournament with 17 goals, two goals ahead of Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah.

Even more impressive are Haaland’s statistics for the entire time he played for Manchester City, where he moved from Borussia Dortmund in the summer of 2022 for €60 million. Since then, the striker has already scored 79 goals in 83 official matches. How significant this figure is is evidenced by the fact that the same Salah, who is second in the English Premier League in scoring over the past two seasons, scored exactly 30 fewer goals during this period.

Evgeniy Fedyakov