Messi, Haaland, Lewandowski: Who has the most MOTM awards so far this season? | OneFootball

Erling Braut Haaland has been nothing short of unstoppable at Manchester City.

When the 22-year-old practically missed an open goal during the closing stages of the Community Shield, there were murmurs that the Citizens’ marquee signing might struggle to adapt to English football.

But that couldn’t have been further from the truth with Haaland taking the Premier League by storm, amassing a truly staggering record of 14 goals from just eight appearances in England’s top-flight.

Haaland's epic start to the season

As such, it seems inevitable at this point that Haaland will obliterate Mohamed Salah's record for the most goals in a 38-game Premier League season, as well as the overall high watermark held by Andy Cole and Alan Shearer while he's at it.

And when you throw in a barnstorming start to the new Champions League campaign for good measure, you'd be inclined to think that not a single record will survive Haaland's goalscoring might this season.

However, as unbelievable as it might sound, Haaland isn't necessarily clear as Europe's top performer in 2022/23 just yet because he's currently facing some stiff competition from across the English Channel.

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Erling Haaland was born in which city?

Manchester Leeds Oslo London

Don't forget about Messi

And no, we're not talking about Kylian Mbappe, but rather Lionel Messi who has achieved whatever the exact opposite of second-second-syndrome is at Paris Saint-Germain in recent weeks.

Obviously, it goes without saying that Messi's goalscoring achievements haven't been able to compete with those of Haaland, but there is perhaps reason to believe that his overall output has nevertheless been superior.

Take, for example, Man of the Match awards over at WhoScored, which are one of the best objective measures of a player's overall performances that you can get in the beautiful game.

Each game, the data gurus hand every player a rating out of 10 based on how well they've played across a number of key metrics evaluating their defensive, offensive and team-play contributions.

The player with the highest rating in each game is then given the Man of the Match award, which over the course of the season essentially indicates who's been the most dominant performer most often.

Who has the most MOTM awards so far this season?

Got it? Right then, well, we just had to assess what the state of play was at this stage of the season by using their database to find out who has the most MOTM prizes across Europe's top five leagues so far.

The likes of Aleksandar Mitrović, Jude Bellingham, Marcus Rashford, Roberto Firmino and Vinicius Junior all have two gongs to their name, but it's the players with three or more that we're interested in because there are only 10 ballers who qualify at this stage.

And well, let's just say that the results go to show Haaland still has Mr. Messi to deal with before he can be considered the undisputed number one in European league football this season...

10. Rafał Gikiewicz (Augsburg) - 3

9. Rafael Leao (AC Milan) - 3

8. Martin Terrier (Rennes) - 3

7. Marius Wolf (Borussia Dortmund) - 3

6. Lorenzo Pellegrini (AS Roma) - 3

5. Erling Haaland (Manchester City) - 3

4. Enzo Le Fée (Lorient) - 3

3. Emil Audero (Sampdoria) - 3

2. Robert Lewandowski (Barcelona) - 5

Messi's astonishing start to the season

Goodness me. So, with the exception of Lewandowski, Messi has collected at least double the amount of MOTM awards as any other player in Europe's top five leagues and it's only October.

Across nine Ligue 1 appearances, Messi has been named as statistically the best player on the pitch two-thirds of the time despite sharing the pitch with Mbappe and Neymar who already have eight and 15 goal contributions respectively.

This, too, is reflected in Messi's average match rating for the season with his score of 8.86 ranking as the highest on the continent while Haaland collects the silver medal on 8.37.

Now, take from those statistics what you will and they are ultimately only that, statistics, but the results are nevertheless illustrative of the fact that the new kid on the block still has the elder statesman to compete with this season.

And let's face it, a battle between Messi and Haaland for the 2023 Ballon d'Or would just be so fascinating to watch.