The players wearing the number nine shirts, Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé, could decide Manchester City vs Real Madrid, the game of the Champions League play-off round.
Ahead of this week’s headline Champions League match between Manchester City and Real Madrid, the challenge of facing a world-class number nine will play a big part in the teams’ preparations.
In a grossly underwhelming spell for City, Erling Haaland remains the man to stop. For Madrid, after a slow start at the club, Kylian Mbappé has grown into the superstar they thought they were signing in the summer.
But both have, despite being the leading scorer for two of the biggest clubs in the world, had doubts raised about them this season. That is at least partly because of the pressure that comes with wearing the number nine jersey for those teams, but also because of the sky-high standards they have set with their goalscoring and trophy records in recent years.
And with City and Madrid meeting in a Champions League play-off round they are in precisely because both teams have underperformed this season, there is even more pressure on these star strikers to come up with the goods in the two-legged tie. One of these two giants of European football won’t even be in the last 16 of this season’s Champions League.
Both clubs have had issues in the first half of 2024-25, and both teams’ centre-forwards have been questioned at some stage even though they are up there with the highest-scoring players in Europe.
Despite City’s struggles, Haaland has scored almost as consistently as anyone in Europe. Among players in the top five European leagues, only Robert Lewandowski (30), Harry Kane (28) and Mohamed Salah (26) have scored more goals in all competitions this season than the City forward (25). Take penalties out of the equation and only Lewandowski (25) is ahead of him (23).
Mbappé isn’t far behind, on 23 goals overall and 18 non-penalty goals, sixth and seventh, respectively, among top-five European league players. Both are having prolific campaigns.
There are concerns, however, that Haaland, while scoring 31.2% of City’s goals all on his own, could actually be a hindrance to the team. Playing for a possession-dominant side whose players have had more touches of the ball and made more passes than any other team in the Premier League this season, Haaland ranks second-from-bottom in the league for touches per 90 minutes (22.7), ahead only of Jamie Vardy (20.0), among players to play 1,000+ minutes.
While adding record-breaking, treble-winning numbers of goals in his first season following his move from Borussia Dortmund in the summer of 2022 and continuing to score both last season and this quicker than most other forwards in Europe, there are legitimate doubts that Haaland’s lack of contribution – goals aside – is part of the reason City are struggling at the moment.
Without a striker who gets involved in their build-up play, City are at times almost a man lighter. In the defeat to Arsenal last week, Haaland was peripheral, touching the ball just 10 times in 90 minutes. He hasn’t had more than 33 touches in any game in any competition this season. It didn’t cost City in their first two seasons with Haaland up front, but they could clearly do with more from their number nine at the moment.
Mbappé, meanwhile, came into a Madrid team that was already hugely successful – last season’s La Liga and European champions. On their way to winning a European double, Madrid played without a recognised centre-forward and had a match-winner and Ballon d’Or contender in Vinícius Júnior who took up the kind of left-sided attacking positions in which Mbappé likes to operate.
With Jude Bellingham and Rodrygo to be squeezed into a functional starting XI that had also lost a legend from midfield after Toni Kroos retired, Mbappé faced a challenge to fit straight in. The inevitable slow start led to questions as to whether he could play alongside Vinícius at all.
Madrid were always going to sign Mbappé, though. One of the best and most exciting forward players on the planet was out of contract and desperate to join. The club built for Galácticos was never going to pass up this opportunity to sign one of the biggest names in football.
Predictably, playing all four of Mbappé, Vinícius, Bellingham and Rodrygo together hasn’t gone entirely smoothly. There has been less control in midfield without Kroos, and defensive balance has been an issue. They have conceded two or more goals in 12 games already this season, and have suffered a handful of damaging defeats, including 4-0 and 5-2 losses to Barcelona.
Their record in big games has been particularly poor, and Mbappé hasn’t exactly shone. In 10 meetings with teams currently ranked in the top 30 sides in the world according to Opta’s Power Rankings, Madrid have just two wins, both of which have come against Atalanta. In those 10 games, Mbappé has just three goals.
The only one of those three goals that affected the final score of the game was his equaliser in the draw with Atlético Madrid this weekend. That stat is damning of the impact Mbappé has had in big moments since moving to the Bernabéu, but the fact he has finally had a say in a game as big as the Madrid derby should at least give some hope that things are heading in the right direction.
The Frenchman’s performances have started to look much more positive of late, and he and Vinícius are proving they can play and even thrive together. Mbappé has nine goals in his last eight games in all competitions.
That has meant the minor doubts about Mbappé that surfaced earlier in the season are disappearing, although the blunt team performance in last week’s 1-0 defeat at Espanyol has meant they aren’t entirely gone. He could do with a statement performance against City this week.
Meanwhile, City’s unconvincing form continues. They were thrashed at Arsenal last weekend days after having stumbled into a play-off position in the Champions League, forced to come from behind to beat Club Brugge on the final matchday of the league phase. They are only in the play-offs at all because of wins in their three easiest games on paper, against Brugge, Slovan Bratislava and Sparta Prague.
Haaland’s goals have hardly slowed – he has seven in his last eight games – but it is difficult to escape the feeling that he isn’t hitting quite top form. At his best, he is a constant threat, and he hasn’t been getting as many chances as usual of late. In his 17 league and Champions League appearances this season up until the end of November, he had five or more shots in 13 different games. In his 15 appearances since, meanwhile, he has managed 5+ shots just once – in a win over relegation-threatened Leicester.
However, it would also be fair to argue that he has maintained a more than respectable goalscoring rate while being off his best and being relied on relentlessly, barely afforded a rest throughout City’s poor run. He has been substituted off just five times in his 33 starts this season, and only two of those substitutions came earlier than the 81st minute.
In the last few weeks, he has started consistently outscoring his expected goals after a period of the worst underperformance in front of goal of his City career, as the below chart shows. His underlying numbers suggest his form might be turning a corner, and you’d be brave to bet against him doing so.
Against a depleted backline that will be missing all four of Madrid’s first-choice defenders, Haaland won’t mind if he doesn’t get many touches of the ball, and will back himself to score even if he doesn’t get many chances. There may have been blanks against Liverpool, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Inter and Juventus this season, but he has scored home and away against both Arsenal and Chelsea, while also netting against PSG a few weeks ago. He always retains a threat in big games.
With 47 goals in 47 Champions League games, he is already well on his way towards the top 10 scorers in the competition’s history, currently four behind Mbappé in eighth. Both have a good chance of one day challenging Cristiano Ronaldo’s record of 140 at the top of that chart. They are the superstar strikers who could come to define the next 10 years at the top of the game.
In the more immediate term, however, they have the chance to define their respective clubs’ seasons.
For City, the Champions League represents the only hope of making 2024-25 a success, and while it is far from the be-all and end-all for Madrid, who will be desperate to secure back-to-back La Liga titles for the first time since 2008, Europe’s premier competition is their competition. They are the current holders and record winners, with 15 titles. It is also the trophy Mbappé has moved to Madrid to win. His time there would be considered a failure if he weren’t to win it at least once.
Manchester City vs Real Madrid is a fixture we have grown used to seeing. This year it becomes just the fourth fixture in European Cup history to take place in four consecutive seasons.
But this year’s tie will be different because of the headline act who could well decide it. There may be more meetings to come and Haaland and Mbappé could end up being judged on how they affect these huge occasions. There’s no better time to get started than the here and now.
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