JUST IN: Messi 2nd, Haaland 5th and Mbappé 7th – Top 15 players with most hat-tricks in their careers

Erling Haaland is quite simply a goalscoring phenomenon. He has scored at a ridiculous rate at Molde, RB Salzburg, Borussia Dortmund, Manchester City and with Norway. At just 24, Haaland has scored a remarkable 260 goals in 317 appearances since making his professional debut for Bryne in his homeland in 2016.....CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM THE SOURCE

Haaland is widely regarded as the best striker in the world and he’s the most valuable player on the planet currently at €180 million, alongside Kylian Mbappé, Vinicius Jr and Jude Bellingham. Haaland highlighted his lethal finishing ability by scoring a hat-trick against Ipswich on Saturday as Man City continued their impressive start to the season on their quest for a fifth consecutive Premier League title. Remarkably, it represented Haaland’s 22th career hat-trick already and he’s well placed the records set by two legends of the game.

Top 10 players with the most hat-tricks in their careers since 2000

When analysing players with the most hat-tricks across the top 15 leagues, European competition and international games since 2000, Cristiano Ronaldo sits first. The 39-year-old has netted an impressive 60 hat-tricks across his career spanning Sporting CP, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus and with Portugal. Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have enjoyed a healthy rivalry across their careers and the Argentinian ranks second. Messi has scored 57 hat-tricks in 1033 games, which works out as one every 18.1 games – slightly better of Ronaldo’s average of one every 19.2 games. Ronaldo’s time in Saudi Arabia and Messi’s MLS adventure are not included in our statistics.

While Haaland ranks 5th for most hat-tricks, the Norwegian easily has the best ratio for scoring them. His 22 hat-tricks have arrived in just 250 games across games in the designated competitions, which calculates as a hat-trick every 11.4 games. At his current scoring rate, Haaland is on track to eclipse Ronaldo and Messi’s records for career hat-tricks.  There’s a considerable gap between Ronaldo and Messi to Robert Lewandowski, who sits third in the list of most hat-tricks. The Polish international is still playing with Barcelona but he won’t catch the top two, unlike Haaland.

Luis Suárez and Harry Kane complete the top five with the England captain registering a trio of goals four times last season with Bayern Munich against Bochum, Darmstadt, Mainz and Borussia Dortmund.