Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe can carry on football’s legendary rivalry, according to Kolo Toure, and there is no reason why they can’t.
In a 4-1 victory over Arsenal on Wednesday, Erling Haaland scored his 49th goal of the year for Manchester City, and Kylian Mbappe, who won the Golden Boot at the World Cup in Qatar, is having another outstanding season at Paris Saint-Germain.
Across all competitions, Kylian Mbappe has scored 34 goals. When it comes to players from the top five leagues in Europe, only Erling Haaland’s incredible total surpasses this term.
The France star, Kylian Mbappe, and Erling Haaland, will be the players competing it out at the peak of the game because Kylian Mbappe’s clubmate Lionel Messi is nearing the end of his career and Cristiano Ronaldo has left Europe for Saudi Arabia. Former Man City and Arsenal defender Toure has no doubt about this.
Absolutely, absolutely. They are both incredibly great players.
Young, hungry players with big qualities, playing for top clubs. You can see that the rivalry is coming, you can feel that, because they’re both goal scorers.
They have different qualities obviously. There is one who really is a good scorer and there is one who – yeah he can score goals, but at the same time, he can provide, he can dribble.
It’s going to be really interesting to see both of them fighting, because they are the next generation, definitely.
Toure told Stats Perform.
With his goal in the fifth minute of stoppage time, Haaland has now scored 33 league goals for the season, a new Premier League record for a 38-game season and one short of the competition’s best-ever total of 34 goals (held by Alan Shearer and Andy Cole). Despite providing two assists for Kevin De Bruyne against Arsenal, Haaland lacked his usual clinical edge in the match.
He is a very dominant striker.
But, one thing I have to say is he chose the right thing for him, because he’s a goal scorer and he needs to play for a team that provides him the ball.
When you have De Bruyne, you have [Bernardo] Silva, you have [Ilkay] Gundogan, you have Jack Grealish, unbelievable players around him providing the ball, the quality they’re showing to support him is incredibly great.
That’s so clever from the boy, he made the right choice.
He got to the right team. We’re going to do the work for him to just finish, because he’s a finisher.
His control, the way he handled the ball to bring the team up when Arsenal were pressing them, it was unbelievable. I saw a player who can get the ball from the feet, take the ball, dribble past two, three, three players and have a shot.
That shows the quality he has and there’s big room for him to just keep improving. He is in the right team, he has the right manager and he will keep improving definitely. But, what he has shown is unbelievable.
Toure said.