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Aleksandar Mitrovic reaches 50 international goals faster than Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo as he keeps Erling Haaland off the scoresheet and celebrates win with pizza – but Richard Osman says he’s not even Fulham’s best player
Aleksandar Mitrovic has reached his 50th international goal faster than both Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, doing so as Erling Haaland was kept off the scoresheet.
The Fulham striker hit half a century for Serbia in his 76th game, helping secure a 2-0 win over Norway in the Nations League, gaining promotion to League A.
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In doing so, he did it at the expense of Manchester City sensation Haaland, and even joined the Norwegian at the top of the 2022/23 edition’s scoring charts on six goals.
A fan favourite at Craven Cottage and a well known joker around the training ground, ‘Mitro’ even celebrated the promotion in iconic fashion, by eating pizza in the changing room post-match.
And he had every right to do so, with his 76 game mark to hit 50 goals better than Ronaldo’s 114 and Messi’s 107, as well as a host of other stars including Wayne Rooney and Robert Lewandowski.
However, it wasn’t all good news on the night, with the 28-year-old striker later seen hobbling down the touchline with a hefty looking ice pack around his ankle.
That may spell trouble when Mitrovic faces former club Newcastle next up in the Premier League, hoping to catch the only man ahead of him in the Golden Boot race, Haaland.
But as Fulham fan, TV presenter and hit author Richard Osman told talkSPORT, the Cottagers are far from a one-man team as they continue to impress on their return to the top flight.
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“Everyone wrote us off and everyone wrote Mitrovic off,” he said.
“It’s one of those instances when you’re a fan of a club we sort of knew we had something going.
“Last time we were in the Premier League - I know we’re a yo-yo club - but last time we had a good team - we had Joachim Andersen, we had Mitrovic then but they didn’t play cohesively we had [Alphonse] Areola in goal.
"We had a really really good team, certainly too good to go down, but we went down.
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“I think we know that Marco Silva is certainly a very, very good manager for us and again we’ve bought well.
“There was a Nottingham Forest clip that went viral where they’re previewing the game against us and they kept calling us Mitrovic, they said ‘we’ve got this game against Mitrovic’.
“If we’re a one man team then it’s [Joao] Palhinha, that’s the best signing anyone has made in the Premier League, he’s such a terrific footballer.”
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