Erling Haaland is deadly for Manchester City, but Real Madrid once had a striker who took brutal efficiency to another level
By Richard Foster for The Football Mine
Erling Haaland’s emphatic header against Everton was his 36th goal in the league this season, the highest in the top flight since Southampton striker Ron Davies scored 37 in 1966-67. With a contract until 2027, he could become the first player to win the golden boot in England for four straight seasons. A few players have managed this feat in the big European leagues: Jean-Pierre Papin (1988-1992) and Carlos Bianchi (1976-1979) in France, Robert Lewandowski in Germany (2018-2022), Lionel Messi (2017-2021) and Hugo Sánchez in Spain (1984–88).
Sánchez won the Pichichi for Atlético Madrid in 1984–85 before moving to Real Madrid and winning it in each of the next three seasons. His most eye-catching achievement, however, came in the 1989-90 season when he claimed his fifth Pichichi in six years. Not only did he match Telmo Zarra’s record of 38 league goals – which was set in 1950-51 and was only surpassed 60 years later when Cristiano Ronaldo scored 40 in a season – but he scored all 38 of his goals with one-touch finishes. By comparison, 86% of Haaland’s 36 goals have come from one-touch finishes, including seven penalties. Of the previous six golden boot winners, only Mo Salah in 2018-19 has come close to that level of efficiency, with 73%.
Sánchez was suspended for three of the 38 league matches so, like Haaland is doing, he scored more than a goal a game. Even though they were all one-touch goals, Sánchez exhibited a wide range, from the prosaic to the poetic in their execution. Although a fair share came in the classic goal poachers’ territory, he was also fond of the spectacular and in particular his trademark overhead kick – or chilena.
In April 1988 against Logroñes he scored perhaps his most celebrated goal, an acrobatic left-foot volley that was given its own moniker of el señor gol. His manager, the Dutchman Leo Beenhakker, said of the finish: “When a player scores a goal like that, play should be suspended and a glass of champagne offered to the 80,000 fans that witnessed it.” In an interview with Marca, Sánchez claimed he had tried “about 15,000 chilenas and scored about 30 goals”. A conversion rate of 0.2% is nothing to write home about, but it would take an extreme curmudgeon to be counting.
Sánchez ensured such goals would be remembered by bookmarking them with his much-imitated somersault celebration. His successors include Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. “As a child, I saw Hugo Sánchez on television celebrating goals like that,” the Gabonese striker said. “I thought it was incredible, and I wanted to do it. The backflip I sometimes do when I score is actually an homage to him.”
Sánchez’s first goal in the 1989-90 season came in Real’s victory over Sporting Gijón on the opening day. It was a perfect example of his poacher’s instincts. He reacted first to a long-range free-kick that had cannoned off the post, knocking in the rebound from just inside the penalty area. It was not a thing of beauty, a little on the scruffy side even as he slightly mishit the ball into the ground, but it set him on his way to matching Tella’s record. The majority of his goals were, like this first one, scored from inside the box and with his favoured left foot.
The Real Madrid fans did not mind the simplicity of his goals, says the Spanish football journalist Graham Hunter. “To see him score that many goals in a title-winning season, but also to see him finishing with such panache – sometimes very simply, sometimes a penalty, sometimes an overhead kick, for which he was famed – embodied the way in which Madrid wanted the world to see them. ‘We’re above you, we are Ancien Régime. We don’t need to bother with three or four touches or construction; we just score.’ That’s what Hugo Sánchez gave them.”
Almost a quarter of his goals came from headers and, alongside the simple nod-ins he was not averse to the odd flying effort, the finest of which came away at Malaga when he met a cross in mid-air and flashed it into the bottom corner. Only four of his 38 goals were penalties (a much lower proportion than Haaland who has scored seven spot kicks out of his 35) but, significantly, two of them were against bitter rivals Barcelona.
He also scored a handful from direct-free kicks, which were either whipped into the top corner or placed to perfection. He scored one of his best against Logroñes, guiding the ball into the corner from 25 yards out, as he hit the first of his three hat-tricks that season. His second hat-trick came in Real’s biggest victory of the season, a 7-0 thrashing of Castellón that featured an overhead kick that was hit with what bordered on nonchalance.
A suspension for the penultimate game of the season against his old club Atlético meant he needed three goals against Oviedo in the 38th and final match of the season to equal Tella’s record of 38. In a microcosm of his season, all three goals were slightly different. The first was a penalty he dispatched with authority into the top corner; the second was a powerful header; and the third was a straightforward tap-in scored past a stranded goalkeeper.
There were still more than 20 minutes remaining in the match and he had several chances to score that 39th goal, which would have given him the outright record in La Liga. He had a couple of opportunities in the dying minutes – a shot from outside the area that slipped just wide of the post and an effort from close range that was saved by the keeper. Had either of these late chances been converted, he would have overtaken Tella’s total but also ruined his 100% run of one-touch finishes – a record even Haaland is unlikely to surpass.
This is an article from The Football Mine
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