Messi and Ronaldo remain dominant forces in world football, with 30 and 29 league goals respectively for Barcelona and Juventus this season, but aged 33 and 36, their era cannot last forever.

Robert Lewandowski is on course for this season's European Golden Shoe with 40 goals for Bayern Munich; but looking down the list of top 10 goalscorers this season, Mbappé and Haaland stand out - not just for their attacking output, but also the fact that both could still have been playing under-21 football at the start of the campaign.

So, how do they stack up?

Goals

Mbappé and Haaland are both attacking players, judged primarily on the cold, hard currency of how many goals they provide for their team. Mbappé has scored 40 times in all competitions for PSG this season, laying on 10 more. Haaland has scored one fewer than the French World Cup winner, despite being more of a classic No.9, but has actually assisted two more.

There is precious little to choose between them in this regard, and Thierry Henry - an Arsenal and France legend who knows a thing or two about goals - refused to be drawn on whom he would rather have in his team on Sky recently. "What happened to playing with two?!" he laughed when pressed on who his favourite was.

Mbappé's goal involvements have come in at one every 70.8 minutes he has played this season; Haaland's one every 67.6. Again, there is very little to separate the pair, but these numbers can also be unpacked.

Haaland has started all 40 of his games for Dortmund as their undisputed centre-forward, in a central attacking role. Teammates Jadon Sancho and former FC Lorient star Raphaël Guerreiro are both in double digits for assists, and although the big Norwegian has laid on a surprising number himself, he is undoubtedly the focal point of their attack, there to contribute the final action.

Mbappé's 45 games have seen him line up variously as a central striker, a winger on both flanks, and even, on occasion, deeper in central midfield. He is most prolifically used on the left of the three behind a focal point of either Moise Kean or Mauro Icardi in what is now Mauricio Pochettino's 4-2-3-1, and his average starting position is significantly deeper and wider than Haaland's. Only Angel Di Maria has contributed double-digit assists, meanwhile.

That Mbappé takes just 3.2 minutes longer per goal involvement from the wing than Haaland does right up front, without the same help the Norwegian enjoys, makes it 1-0 to Mbappé in this regard.

Consistency

Another player who knows a thing or two about finding the back of the net is, of course, Ronaldo himself. Having recently overtaken Pele - at least by his own reckoning - with his 758th career strike, the Portuguese legend has nonetheless averaged 42 goals a season for 18 years whichever way you cut it.

"Some players can have one or two great seasons," he explained at his unveiling as Livescore's Official Global Brand Ambassador. "The really great players are the ones that keep doing it season after season, and that's not so easy to do. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of commitment."

So burning brightly is one measure, but providing the deep heat that a decade of goals can is clearly another. While Mbappé and Haaland are both barely out of their teens, the PSG man is 580 days older than his potential career rival. But while he may have had a year-and-half longer to make an impact, he has needed significantly less time, not more.

Haaland had won back-to-back Austrian Bundesliga titles before moving to Dortmund in December 2019, but last week's DFB Cup win - in which he scored a brace - is arguably his first major honour, one won from within one of Europe's top five leagues per UEFA coefficient.

Mbappé's first major honour was the Ligue 1 Uber Eats title won with Monaco in 2017. That season, then 17, the forward hit 15 league goals and assisted eight more as the principality side upset the odds to be crowned French champions seven points clear of his future employers, PSG. By the time he was 20 - the age Haaland is now - Mbappé had already fired France to the top of world football, scoring four goals on the way to his nation's second World Cup triumph.

Those might be the highlights, but Mbappé also wins out for his output, regardless of opponent or spectacle. Haaland has had four seasons of double-digits for goals, one each of them in Norway and Austria. Mbappé has five, all of them in France. Mbappé 2, Haaland 0.

Character

Goals, trophies and attacking output might be positive statements compared to the normative one that would be a judgement on the players' personalities, but any club looking to spend big on either Mbappé or Haaland - this summer or one of many down the road - will undoubtedly look at how easily they would mesh with their new dressing rooms.

Both are model professionals - they couldn't have scaled the heights of modern football at such young ages without so being - but Haaland's one-word answers in post-match interviews certainly stand in stark contrast to Mbappé's smiling effusiveness, and while Haaland showed his ability with a brace against PSG in the Champions League last February, his meditation celebration ruffled feathers.

It was Neymar Jr., not Mbappé, who mimicked the celebration when PSG got revenge in the reverse fixture with a 2-0 win, and while the Brazilian ran over to his teammate after the first goal of that comeback aggregate 3-2 win, Mbappé does seem to be cut from a different cloth.

This is a player who donated his World Cup earnings in 2018 - nearly half a million Euros - to charity, saying at the time that he doesn't feel he should earn money for the honour of representing his country. Haaland may be somewhat misunderstood, but Ligue1.com nonetheless suspects that this is a perfect hat-trick for Mbappé.

Henry also said in the aforementioned interview that "I can't go against my fellow countryman." Neither can we, Thierry. Neither can we.