Every Tottenham Hotspur supporter knows that 2024/25 Europa League Player of the Tournament and World Cup winner Cristian Romero is one of the best center backs in the world, and there are plenty of Romero's peers making the same claim that he is among the best center backs on this planet, even though it still seems like his greatness gets underrated.
One of the best ways to highlight a player's greatness is by pointing out how they are able to raise their games against other elite players, and there is no question that Manchester City superstar striker Erling Haaland, who broke the record for most Premier League goals in a season, is someone who does get his due as an elite footballer.
Well, Romero and Haaland, in case you forgot, matched up on Matchday 2 of the 2025/26 Premier League season. And Romero blanketed him. We didn't hear a peep from Haaland all game, as Romero had him locked up under wraps with three tackles and three interceptions in an insane defensive performance against the world's best pure goal-scorer.
At the time, it felt like Romero didn't get enough mainstream plaudits for the way he quieted the best striker in the Premier League. But now that Haaland is going off in all his games after that, maybe people should circle back to Romero's big day against Manchester City and give him more praise.
Erling Haaland has toasted everyone except Cristian Romero
In five matches this season, Haaland has scored six goals. He has two braces and has scored in literally every game since the Tottenham one. In fact, the only game Haaland hasn't scored was the one against Romero. And here's the craziest part; he only had a single shot the entire game against Tottenham. There's a team effort with Micky van de Ven, too, of course, and he is also a world-class center back, but Romero is the main star of the show and was the one balling out the most in that game.
Now that Haaland has added to his Premier League goal tally with one against the vaunted Arsenal defense, maybe Romero and the Tottenham defense need to start getting more credit for being one of the best units in the league and Europe as a whole, with Romero being the star man of said great defense.
Haaland has been the best player in the Premier League to start the 2025/26 season with a goal-scoring record that dwarfs everyone else, but his only poor performance in which he was humbled was at the hands of Romero.
If Romero bested the best striker in the Premier League, then shouldn't that make him the best center back in the Premier League? Or at least merit consideration with literal legend Virgil van Dijk for being the absolute best? Romero has to be in the conversation for No. 1, at a minimum, and he played Haaland a lot better than Arsenal's defenders did.