Haaland vs Mbappé 2020/21 season stats

Haaland's full Dortmund season: a goal a game

This was Haaland's first complete season at Dortmund and his first full campaign in a big-five league, and it produced exactly 41 goals in 41 club appearances, a goal a game at the age of 20. The defining afternoon was Hertha Berlin away on 21 November 2020, when he scored 4 times in 32 second-half minutes in a 5-2 win. A hamstring tear a week later cost him all of December, and a muscle problem in April cost him three more games, which is why the league total stopped at 27 in 28 matches rather than somewhere past 30. He still ended the season as Bundesliga Player of the Season, Dortmund finished third under Edin Terzić to secure Champions League football, and the campaign closed with the DFB-Pokal final in Berlin on 13 May 2021, where Haaland scored twice in a 4-1 win over RB Leipzig for his first trophy since the Salzburg double.

Mbappé's 42: the best scoring season of his PSG career to that point

Mbappé, aged 21 when the season began, ran out to 42 goals and 10 assists in 47 club games, one more goal than Haaland from six more appearances, and his highest total in a Paris shirt until the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons beat it. In Ligue 1 he scored 27 in 31 to win the Golden Boot for a third year running and was voted Player of the Year, but PSG lost the title to Lille by a single point, their first failure to win the league since 2016-17, in a season that saw Thomas Tuchel sacked at Christmas and Mauricio Pochettino take over. The cups went better: the Trophée des Champions in January and the Coupe de France final against Monaco on 19 May 2021, where Mbappé scored the opening goal in a 2-0 win and finished with 7 goals in 5 cup games.

Champions League: top scorer against the Camp Nou hat-trick

Haaland's 10 goals in 8 games made him the competition's top scorer and its Forward of the Season, and no Dortmund player had done either before. He scored 6 in the group stage, with braces home and away against Club Brugge and another two at Zenit, then 4 across the two round-of-16 legs against Sevilla. The second of those, in Dortmund on 9 March 2021, took him to 20 Champions League goals in 14 appearances, faster than anyone in the competition's history. Mbappé's 8 goals in 10 were weighted the other way: only 2 in the group stage, then 6 in the knockouts, including the hat-trick in a 4-1 win at the Camp Nou on 16 February 2021 and two in a 3-2 win at Bayern Munich in the quarter-final first leg. Manchester City then ended both runs: Dortmund went out 4-2 on aggregate in the quarter-final, with Haaland scoreless, and PSG lost the semi-final 4-1, Mbappé missing the second leg at the Etihad with a calf injury.

No head-to-head: the season they missed each other

After the two round-of-16 legs of 2019-20, the draw kept Dortmund and PSG apart in 2020-21, so this is the only season between 2019-20 and 2021-22 in which the pair never shared a pitch for club or country. Norway and France did not meet either: Norway lost their Euro 2020 play-off semi-final to Serbia in October 2020, so Haaland watched Euro 2020 from home while Mbappé played all four of France's games. The full list of their meetings is on the head-to-head page.

Shooting numbers: near-identical league output, different routes

The Understat league rows are unusually close. Haaland scored 27 Bundesliga goals in 2,416 minutes from 23.60 expected goals, Mbappé 27 Ligue 1 goals in 2,392 minutes from 22.85, so both beat their xG by between three and four goals (+3.40 against +4.15). The difference is in how. Mbappé took 6 league penalties and scored all 6, so his non-penalty total was 21; Haaland scored only 2 of his 4 and still reached 25 non-penalty goals, which is why his non-penalty over-performance (+4.40) is the larger. Mbappé shot more often (3.90 per 90 to 3.40), created more (5.38 expected assists to 4.04) and was the sharper finisher of big chances, converting 15 of 25 (60.0%) to Haaland's 16 of 30 (53.3%). Haaland's edge was volume: 30 big chances in 2,416 minutes is one every 81 minutes, the best rate of his Dortmund years.

International football: Haaland's first goals, Mbappé's Euro to forget

Haaland's first international goals came in this window: 6 in 5 Norway games in 2020, including a hat-trick against Romania in the Nations League in October, the same month Norway lost the Euro play-off to Serbia. Mbappé scored 3 in 5 France games in 2020, then went through all four Euro 2020 matches in June 2021 without a goal and missed the decisive penalty in the round-of-16 shoot-out against Switzerland. His 8 goals in 14 caps across 2021 mostly came later in the year, including one in each of the Nations League semi-final and final in October 2021, the trophy this page counts under the 2020-21 edition. The international page has both careers year by year.