Erling Haaland can dominate battle with Kylian Mbappe alongside ‘new Man City team-mate’

Watching Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo trudge wearily about their new surroundings this season has given a clear message that a game-changing era in football is at an end.

Ronaldo rocked up at Manchester United as the returning hero in August, but he now tends to neither score nor move all that often and decided the best course of treatment for a hip flexor problem on Manchester derby weekend was to spend several hours on a private plane.

As for Messi, there is an uncomfortable repeating theme for arguably the greatest player of all time in the autumn of his career. He stands, ashen-faced and helpless as a Champions League humiliation unfolds around him.

The latest instalment came on Tuesday - Messi’s Barcelona past and Paris Saint-Germain present crashing together on the patch of the old enemy Real Madrid.

It was Kylian Mbappe, not a diminishedMessi, who led the charge for PSG before all the contradictions of wonky ego-led squad building came crashing down on Mauricio Pochettino and his players.

The Messi-Ronaldo era, where the two greats have shared 12 of the past 13 Ballons d’Or on offer between them, is unparalleled in football history. Two players dominating alongside each other for so long to this extent is unprecedented. Previously, a select few would duke it out to be considered the best in the world for a few years before a new crop swept them away.

This is the norm to which you would expect everything to revert, but we also all love a narrative. Two towering talents and their army of advocates battling against one another has been beyond tedious at times, but we’re creatures of habit.

The assumption is that, in the corner opposite the supreme Mbappe, Erling Haaland will continue to make his case