"It annoys me a little bit that I didn't score with my last kick of the game." Erling Haaland said that after netting nine goals in a single World Cup match. Nine. The mindset was already fully formed at 18.
Before Haaland was breaking Premier League records at Manchester City, he was doing something that still looks surreal on paper: scoring nine times in a 12-0 demolition of Honduras at the 2019 U20 World Cup in Poland. Four goals in the first half, five in the second. He had one final chance in stoppage time to reach double figures and missed it — which, apparently, ruined his evening.
A record that has nowhere near been challenged
Nine goals in a single World Cup game, at any level, is the kind of number that doesn't get approached — it gets left alone. At the senior tournament, the all-time record is five, set by Russia's Oleg Salenko against Cameroon at USA '94. Haaland's tally is nearly double that. The gap isn't close enough to call it a record under pressure.
Salenko's five-goal haul came in a 6-1 win, earned him a share of the Golden Boot alongside Hristo Stoichkov, and is still talked about 30 years later as one of the great individual performances in World Cup history. Haaland lapped it — as a teenager, in a youth tournament — and then complained about the one he missed.
The irony in both stories is the same: elite individual brilliance, early group-stage exit. Norway lost their other two games and went home despite Haaland's 12-goal contribution to the group's most one-sided result. Russia also didn't survive the group stage, Salenko's goals notwithstanding.
Haaland's senior World Cup chapter is only starting
Norway's opening 4-1 win over Iraq in the current World Cup qualifying group — with Haaland scoring twice — suggests the senior tournament record isn't something he's stopped thinking about. Whether Norway can actually qualify is the bigger question, but backing him to lead the scoring charts in any competition he enters isn't a stretch. It's just pattern recognition.
He missed a sitter against Honduras and called it annoying. That's the detail that stays with you.
