Real Madrid v Man City: Kylian Mbappe injury threatens striker shoot-out with Erling Haaland

How enticing must the long Real Madrid medical bulletin look to Erling Haaland. It starts in defence and runs through many names.

Eder Militao, probably the first choice of the centre-backs, is out for months, thanks to the injury he sustained on Sunday. David Alaba, who has managed one full game this season, will be waiting for a while until he is fit enough for another.

There’s more. Dean Huijsen is on his way back to fitness but there would be risk rushing him into action for tonight’s hosting of Manchester City.

Two right-backs, Dani Carvajal and Trent Alexander-Arnold, are unavailable. So is one left-back, Ferland Mendy, while the state-of-mind of another two, Fran Garcia and Alvaro Carreras can only be wondered at: Both were sent off in the weekend’s home defeat to Celta Vigo, part of a sequence of just two Madrid wins in seven games.

Kylian Mbappe, meanwhile, must look harder for optimistic signs in his preparation for Madrid against City.

There’s the absence of Rodri, and the fact that without their galvanising midfielder, this City team do leave gaps. Saturday’s 3-0 win over Sunderland marked a first clean sheet after a four-match rollercoaster in which 10 goals were conceded.

When it comes to duels between Haaland, 25, and Mbappe, 26, a pair of finishers for so long feted as the best in the world of their generation, prevailing conditions are a factor. But there’s always the idea that their individual excellence, the seizing of a moment, might bend a contest their way.

Which is why Madrid seemed so concerned on Tuesday that Mbappe, the leading scorer in the Champions League coming into match day six, should overcome the discomforts of a painful finger injury and a soreness in his left thigh to be as close to his best as possible at the Bernabeu.

Both strikers are in superb form, probably as sharp as they have been coming into any head-to-head of their developing rivalry. And it is a peculiar sort of rivalry in that while for well over half a decade they have been identified as probably the most coveted striker anywhere in their age group, they have actually shared a pitch very seldom.

A mere three times, in fact. By comparison with the joust Mbappe-Haaland was earmarked to succeed, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi had, at 24 and 22 respectively, already been on opposite sides in a final and a semi-final of the Champions League. Once they were both employed in La Liga, at Barcelona and Madrid, Ronaldo and Messi had faced each other nearly 20 times by the time they were at the ages Mbappe and Haaland are now.

More than five-and-a-half years have passed since the first Haaland-Mbappe duel, a last-16 Champions League tie between Borussia Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain.

Haaland scored twice for Dortmund in the Germany leg, one of his goals a thumping drive that remains prominent in any highlights show reel of his vast haul of career goals. But in Paris, where Mbappe had started the game on the bench because of fitness issues, PSG overhauled a 2-1 first-leg deficit.

But at the end of the tie, the Mbappe-Haaland rivalry of the future would be fully signposted, personalised, the Frenchmen joining teammates in mimicking the Norwegian's trademark goal celebration, the one where he sits on the grass, cross-legged, as if meditating.

Now the duel looks ready to take off, gain momentum, write fresh chapters season after season. Wednesday’s contest will be the third meeting between City and Madrid within nine months.

If the 2023 and 2024 European club champions both progress, as they would