Manchester United legend Wayne Rooney was one of the best goalscorers in the modern era.
Rooney scored an incredible 306 goals for club and country — 253 for United and 53 in an England shirt.
Impressively, the retired forward did not consistently played as a lone striker throughout his career.
Wayne Rooney often played behind strikers like Louis Saha and Robin van Persie at Old Trafford.
When Cristiano Ronaldo was in his pomp at Manchester United, the Englishman would often be deployed as a makeshift left-winger.
Considering the variety of positions Wayne Rooney played in apart from being a number nine, his goalscoring record is all the more impressive.
The Plymouth Argyle boss is the polar opposite of a goalscorer like Erling Haaland, who has always been an out-and-out striker.
Wayne Rooney makes bold Erling Haaland claim
The £51 million man would perhaps be unable to play as a number 10 our out wide.
But when a striker is as much of a natural finisher as the Manchester City frontman is, it would be a waste of his talent to play up anywhere else than up front on a football pitch.
On BBC Sport, Wayne Rooney was asked only to speak once he hears the name of a superior goalscorer to him and when Haaland was mentioned, he decided to stay quiet — suggesting that he was better at finding the back of the net than the 23-year-old.
The 38-year-old had the same reaction when strikers like Alvaro Morata, Romelu Lukaku, Olivier Giroud, Fernando Torres, Miroslav Klose, Robin van Persie and Didier Drogba were named. However, Rooney went on to admit that Gary Lineker was a better goalscorer than him.
Erling Haaland is a better goalscorer than Wayne Rooney so far
Perhaps Wayne Rooney feels the way he does as he managed to score several goals for 17 years — while Haaland has only been a professional player for eight years.
However, by the age of 23, Rooney had not set the goalscoring records Haaland already has.
The former Borussia Dortmund striker set the Premier League goalscoring record for a single season by scoring 36 goals in 35 appearances — while scoring 27 in his second season while the ex-Everton forward’s highest number of goals scored in a single campaign are 27 in the 2011/2012 campaign.
Haaland is on track to become a better goalscorer than Rooney and by the end of his career, it seems highly likely that he will usurp him in this respect.
