![]() All the best strikers do this, of course-but Haaland has elevated the craft to near-perfection. Throughout the course of a game he’ll hang off the shoulders of the opposition center-backs, hiding in their blind spots, waiting patiently for an opportunity-and then suddenly he appears again, like an apparition, only this time he’s a half-step ahead of the defender, goal-side, and the ball is in the net. Even among elite strikers he is an uncommonly accurate shooter, seemingly always able to find a pocket of space beyond the reach of the keeper’s outstretched fingers, or, when required, able to blast the ball with almost zero backswing, a fizzing sand-wedge of shot hit so hard that the highlights are playing before the keeper knows what’s happened.īut what is truly remarkable about Haaland, if you watch him closely, is his ability to disappear. The problem with trying to analyze Haaland is that he is what a lazier pundit might call the “full package”: quick, strong, as skilful running with the ball at his feet as he is with his back to goal. Or the one against Dortmund in September, in which he beats two defenders to a Joao Cancelo cross and hits it not with his head but with the outside of his left boot, which he has suddenly swung up above his head like a ballerino in grand battement, a feat of such absurd athleticism and proprioceptive precision that the commentator can only say, “Sometimes you cannot believe your eyes.”Ĭountless hours of commentary and column inches have already been spent dissecting Haaland the phenomenon-why he, above others, is so prolific at such a young age. Take his opening goal against Brighton in October, when Brighton defender Adam Webster effectively bounces off Haaland as he sprints through on goal. It is not just the numbers that invite hyperbole, but the style in which he finishes them. (Update: it’s now 26 goals in 20 games-he scored two while I was writing this.) After a quiet first game in the Community Shield, Haaland scored twice in his Premier League debut and has not stopped since: at the time of writing he has scored 24 goals in 19 games, or on average a goal every 60 or so minutes, and scored more alone than 11 out of 20 Premier League sides have with their entire teams. The ease of his transition has been aided by his success on the pitch, where his impact has been both immediate and stupendous. And for me to then play at the same club as him is also special.” (That Manchester City was one of perhaps a half-dozen clubs in the world who could afford his wages is a happy coincidence.) “My parents knew how the country was, so that was a good thing. But still, he felt a connection with the club. ![]() Erling Haaland was just a toddler at the time, too young to remember much-“a little bit when I see pictures, but not a lot,” he says-and the family moved back to Norway when he was three. Haaland was born in the UK his father, Alfie, played for Manchester City himself from 2000 until his early retirement in 2003. His $62 million transfer from Borussia Dortmund in June felt like a homecoming of sorts. ![]() Haaland has settled in quickly in Manchester. His exploding popularity on social media is so overwhelming that the tourist board of Halland, a picturesque region in Sweden, complains that Haaland’s online popularity has almost wiped them off the face of Google: “If nothing is done,” they write in a statement, “we fear our dear region is at risk of becoming a forgotten Atlantis, a place only known in stories and ancient scriptures.” Soon he is a regular midweek trending topic. Such potential at a young age is difficult to compute, literally: he is so good that the developers of the Football Manager video game have to tweak his stats to prevent him from breaking it. Or the time he nearly broke the world 60-meter sprint record in a midweek game against Paris Saint-Germain.īy 18 he is the best player in Norway by 20, he is voted the best player in Germany by 21, FIFPro names him among the 11 best players in the world. Or the hat-trick he scored on his Champions League debut. Of the time Erling Haaland scored nine goals (nine!) in an under-20s game against Honduras, a humiliation that left his dejected opponents crying on the sidelines. This being the 21st century, they share clips, too.
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