Who is Better: Mbappé or Haaland?

By Sam Hyson

Mbappé and Haaland are two of the youngest and brightest stars in football.

With Ronaldo and Messi getting older (although still heavily contributing to their respective teams), there appears to be a new debate between two young star strikers that could occupy the next 15 years of debate in world soccer. This debate seemed to be heightened last week when on consecutive days Kylian Mbappé, the 22-year old Frenchman scored a hat trick against Barcelona in Barcelona and Erling Haaland, the 20-year old Norwegian followed the next day with 2 goals against Sevilla. Coming off of these games, I decided to look into who is the better player so far in their careers using data from fbref.com (note: any stat shown below that has an underline has incomplete data, although it is not noted what that is: I would imagine it is from the early years of their careers).

Shooting

These stats were recorded on 2/28/21

The first category that I will be looking at is shooting, the most important part of a striker’s game. It will be hard to draw a good comparison when looking at total stats, since Mbappé has played 50 more games than Haaland, so I will be predominately looking at per90 stats, essentially the equivalent of per game stats for basketball. Mbappé has more shots and shots on target per 90 minutes, while Haaland has a higher goals per shot, essentially meaning he is more efficient at scoring then Mbappé. Ultimately, I would call this category a wash, with potentially a slight edge to Haaland just because of his efficiency.

Passing

These stats were recorded on 2/28/21.

For the passing category, all of the stats above are per 90, and they show a strong edge for Mbappé across the board. He completes on average double the number of passes on a higher completion percentage, and this trend holds for the 3 distances of passes listed: short (5-15 yards), medium (15-30 yards), and long (>30 yards). One interesting stat is the one all the way on the end, Progressive Passes, which is essentially any completed pass into the penalty area or that moves the ball forward after previous passes have not. Mbappé handily wins this stat, showing that not only is he making more passes, but he is making more important passes then Haaland. While this category is not as important for a striker then shooting is, these results show that Mbappé is so much more than just a standard striker.

Possession

These stats were recorded on 2/28/21.

The last category I am going to look at is possession, which as you can see from the stats above includes basically everything else someone does with the ball at the feet aside from pass and shoot. In the touches category, Mbappé has the ball at his feet much more every game then Haaland, although they are closer to even in the penalty area, which makes sense. Seeing that Haaland only touches the ball 29 times a game, this makes his 2.3 shots per game more impressive. Next, it is not surprising given the amount of times Mbappé touches the ball that he has more attempted dribbles per game, although his success rate is lower than that of Haaland’s. In the carries section, there are two key stats I want to look at: CPA and Dis. CPA is the number of times per game they carry the ball into the penalty area, which Mbappé wins easily. However, Dis is the number of times the player loses the ball after being tackled. While it makes sense that Mbappé will have more of these since he has the ball more, it is impressive how low Haaland’s number is, showing how hard it is to stop him once he has the ball and is running with it.

Looking at these 3 categories, Shooting, Passing, and Possession, I believe that Kylian Mbappé is the superior striker and player to Erling Haaland because he not only has the scoring output of a top striker like Haaland does, but he also does a lot more for PSG in terms of having the ball a lot and finding others for good chances as well.