Haaland Reaches 59 Champions League Goals in 59 Games as Manchester City Opens New Season With Win at Porto

Erling Haaland scored twice as Manchester City opened its Champions League campaign with a 2-0 win at Porto on Tuesday night, taking the Norwegian striker to 59 goals in 59 appearances in the competition — the fastest any player has reached that mark in the tournament's history. The match was one of six played on the opening night of the first matchday of the 2026-27 Champions League league phase, which continues through Thursday with the rest of the 36-team field in action.

What happened at the Estádio do Dragão

City dominated for long stretches without scoring in the first half, with Haaland missing two clear chances and Porto goalkeeper Diogo Costa making several saves to keep the score level. The breakthrough came three minutes into the second half, when Haaland headed in an Enzo Fernández cross to put City ahead. He added a second goal in stoppage time to seal the result. It was the first Champions League away win of Enzo Maresca's tenure as City manager, a role he took on after Pep Guardiola stepped down at the end of last season.

"We could have scored more goals, especially in the first half," Maresca told reporters after the match. "But overall we deserved to win." Haaland, for his part, acknowledged that Porto pushed City late, even as City controlled most of the match.

The numbers

Haaland's brace pushed his Champions League tally to 59 goals in 59 appearances — almost exactly a goal a game across spells at Red Bull Salzburg, Borussia Dortmund and Manchester City. That is a faster pace than any other player has managed in the competition's history. Lionel Messi, by comparison, needed 76 appearances to reach 58 goals. Robert Lewandowski took 83 games to reach the same mark, Kylian Mbappé needed 89, Cristiano Ronaldo 96 and Karim Benzema 108, according to figures compiled by a comparison of the competition's fastest scorers.

The second goal was also Haaland's 36th in the Champions League specifically for Manchester City, drawing him level with Sergio Agüero as the club's joint-highest scorer in the competition. City finished the match with 18 shots to Porto's four and 60 percent of possession, and Haaland was named UEFA's player of the match.

• Haaland: 59 Champions League goals in 59 appearances, an unmatched scoring rate for the competition
• Manchester City 2, FC Porto 0 — goals in the 47th and 90+1st minutes
• City's tally of 18 shots, nine on target, against Porto's four shots and none on target
• Haaland's 36th Champions League goal for City ties Sergio Agüero's club record in the competition

How the rest of the field opened its account

City's win was one of six results on the first night of a competition that now runs on a single 36-team table rather than traditional groups, with each club playing eight league-phase matches before a knockout play-off round in February. Real Madrid beat Inter Milan 2-1 at the Santiago Bernabéu, with Kylian Mbappé and Federico Valverde scoring inside the first 24 minutes before goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois held off a late Inter rally. Borussia Dortmund beat Villarreal 3-2 in a match that produced all five goals after halftime, and Aston Villa came from behind to win 3-2 at Club Brugge. Real Betis, playing in the competition for the first time in 21 years, won 3-2 away at Lille, while AEK Athens beat newcomers LASK 1-0 on a Răzvan Marin free-kick. The rest of the 36-team field, including Barcelona, Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool, played or were scheduled to play over the following two nights to complete the opening round.

Haaland's scoring pace arrives in the context of a season in which he has already set a Premier League record, reaching 100 goals for Manchester City faster than any player in the league's history, and led Norway to the quarterfinals of the 2026 World Cup with seven goals in five matches. He was included last week on the 30-man shortlist for the 2026 Ballon d'Or, his sixth nomination, with the award to be presented next month for the first time outside Paris, at a ceremony alongside fellow nominees Lionel Messi, Jude Bellingham and Mohamed Salah in London.

"These are the games we have to win. We controlled the whole first half, and in the second half we scored and they managed to push us for a good 25 minutes." — Erling Haaland, after Manchester City's 2-0 win at Porto

Who is affected, and what happens next

The result gives Maresca an unbeaten start to his first Champions League campaign as a head coach, after replacing Guardiola in the closing weeks of the 2025-26 season. For City, an early away win at a difficult venue eases the pressure heading into a run of fixtures against stronger league-phase opposition; City's remaining league-phase schedule includes a home match against Paris Saint-Germain on October 14, followed by games against AEK Athens, RB Leipzig, Napoli, Barcelona, Lens and Sporting CP before the phase concludes in late January. For Porto, the loss is an early setback in a group of matches that will decide which teams advance automatically to the round of 16 and which are consigned to a knockout play-off round.

The league phase runs through January 27, after which the top eight finishers advance directly to the round of 16 and the next sixteen teams enter a play-off round in February. This season's final is scheduled for June 5, 2027, at the Estadio Metropolitano in Madrid, the venue's second time hosting the match. For Haaland, the pace he has set — a goal a game across three clubs and 59 European nights — puts him on course to threaten the competition's all-time scoring record, currently held by Ronaldo with 140 goals, should his current rate hold over a full career.