Haaland vs Mbappé 2021/22 season stats

Haaland's stop-start farewell to Dortmund

Haaland was 21 when the season began and opened it with a hat-trick in the DFB-Pokal at Wehen Wiesbaden on 7 August 2021 and two goals and three assists against Eintracht Frankfurt on the first Bundesliga weekend. Then the injuries started: a hip-flexor problem took out most of September and October, a muscle injury in January kept him out until late February, and he missed further games in April. He played only 24 of 34 league matches and still scored 22, a goal every 87.1 minutes, with a final-day flourish of a hat-trick at Bochum on 30 April 2022 and a goal in his last home game against Hertha. Dortmund finished second, eight points behind Bayern, lost the Supercup to the same opponent and went out of the Pokal to St. Pauli in Haaland's absence. His 29 goals in 30 games left him with 86 in 89 for the club when the €60m release-clause move to Manchester City was confirmed on 10 May 2022.

Mbappé's double crown: 28 goals and 17 assists

Mbappé, 22 at kick-off, played 35 of PSG's 38 league games and finished with 28 goals and 17 assists, the first time anyone had led Ligue 1 in both. PSG won the title by 15 points, their eighth in ten seasons and Mbappé's fourth, and he was named Ligue 1 Player of the Year for the third time running. Across all competitions his 21 assists were a career high by some distance; the goals, 39, were three short of the previous season but came with hat-tricks against Vannes, Clermont, Metz, the last of them on the final day against Metz, hours after he announced he had turned down Real Madrid and signed a new contract to 2025. He also scored 5 in 3 Coupe de France ties before PSG went out to Nice on penalties.

Champions League: a group-stage exit and a Bernabéu collapse

This was the only full season of Haaland's career in which his club did not reach the Champions League knockout rounds. He played 3 of Dortmund's six group games because of injury, scored 3 goals, all against Beşiktaş, and watched the decisive defeats to Ajax and Sporting from the sidelines as Dortmund finished third and dropped into the Europa League, where they lost to Rangers without him. Mbappé's 6 goals and 4 assists in 8 games included 4 in a group with Manchester City, then the two that defined PSG's season: a stoppage-time winner against Real Madrid in the first leg of the round of 16 on 15 February 2022, and the opener at the Bernabéu on 9 March that put PSG 2-0 up on aggregate. Karim Benzema then scored three in 17 minutes and PSG were out. It was Mbappé's lowest Champions League return since 2017-18 in goals, but his best in assists.

No meeting, again

Dortmund and PSG were in different Champions League groups and Dortmund were gone by Christmas, so 2021-22 was the second of four straight seasons without a Haaland v Mbappé match. Nor did Norway and France cross paths: Norway missed the 2022 World Cup after finishing third in their qualifying group behind the Netherlands and Turkey, while France qualified comfortably, Mbappé scoring four against Kazakhstan on the night they sealed it. All of their meetings are on the head-to-head page.

The shooting numbers: Haaland's best finishing season at Dortmund

Understat's league rows show the gap in minutes first: Mbappé played 3,040 Ligue 1 minutes to Haaland's 1,917 in the Bundesliga, the biggest difference of any season the two have been in the big five leagues together. Per minute, Haaland was the more productive: 1.03 goals per 90 to 0.86, and he beat his expected goals by +4.97 (22 from 17.03 xG), the largest over-performance of his Dortmund years, helped by scoring all 6 of his league penalties and 12 of 16 big chances (75.0%). Mbappé's season was built on volume and creation: 4.40 shots and 2.10 key passes per 90, 12.69 expected assists against 5.89, and 29 goals from 24.98 xG (+4.02), but a big-chance conversion of only 44.4% (12 of 27), the lowest of his PSG seasons on this site.

International football: Haaland's Nations League burst, Mbappé's qualifying haul

Haaland scored 6 for Norway in 2021, including a hat-trick against Gibraltar in September, but a hip injury ruled him out of the November qualifiers in which Norway's World Cup hopes ended. In June 2022, still inside this season's window, he scored five in four Nations League games, including two against Sweden, on the way to 9 international goals for the calendar year. Mbappé's 8 goals in 14 France games in 2021 included the four against Kazakhstan and one each in the Nations League semi-final and final in October; his 12 in 2022 are dominated by the eight at the Qatar World Cup, which falls in the following season. The international page has both careers year by year.