Erling Haaland NFT trading card sells for £500,000, SMASHING the previous Cristiano Ronaldo record

Erling Haaland's status as one of the world's most famous players continues to grow after a rare NFT trading card version of him was sold for a record £500,000.

The Borussia Dortmund striker is already seen as one of the best in the world and he is expected to help carry football into the future as the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo come to the end of their careers.

And already Haaland's popularity is starting to outstrip Ronaldo's, after an online auction on Sunday saw a late flurry of action see his digital trading sell for a figure that greatly usurped a previous NFT featuring the Manchester United star.

Ronaldo's NFT previously had the record of around £300,000 when it was sold in November.

However, the image on the Portuguese's card was still him playing for Juventus despite having already played 12 times for United having rejoined the Red Devils last summer.

Even that price was seen as disappointing with, auctioneer Bonhams' predicting a sale that could have stretched to £900,000.

The producers of the NFTs, Sorare, had claimed before Haaland's card went up for auction that it 'could go down as the most expensive auction in platform history.'

As the auction headed into the final minute many involved with the online bid looked on astonished as the value of the top bid almost doubled to the eventual sold figure.

The winner of the auction was a Sorare collector going under the username of Zima Blue, who paid for the card with 255.100 Ethereum - which is a cryptocurrency used to trade the cards.

Haaland's card is now among the most valuable digital items in the whole of sport, but his trading cards have also proven popular in the physical realm too.

A one-off signed Topps Chrome 'superfactor' card produced during his debut season at Dortmund was sold for £330,000 back in July.

The one-off Haaland NFT card can now be used as part of a digital trading card game in Sorare's next-gen fantasy football game.

The game is based on real-world matches and players earn points of up to 100 based on their quantifiable positive contributions (goals, assists etc) and negative actions (red and yellow cards etc).

Five players feature on every team and online users compete in matchweeks.