Erling Haaland struggled to satisfy soaring expectations last season and after a summer out of the spotlight he knows the way to reclaim centre stage
Erling Haaland must have had better summers.
One of the best players in the world wants to play on the biggest stages, but the Norwegian also feels the burden of trying to get his country to their first major tournament since a few months before he was born. It hurt to have to sit out Qatar 18 months ago, and it hurt to have to sit out this summer in Germany – even if it did give his body some additional time to rest up.
Watching the Euros continued a story this year that has not cast Haaland as the central character. It was Phil Foden who was awarded the two main individual prizes in England this spring for leading Manchester City to the Premier League, and Rodri who took the acclaim with Spain this summer. As Haaland enters his third season at the Etihad, there is work to do to reposition himself at the top of the modern game with Kylian Mbappe attempting the same at new club Real Madrid.
The rise of Foden and Rodri is a handy reminder for Haaland that achievements in modern football are forgotten very easily. Haaland could be forgiven for thinking a Ballon d’Or was inevitable given his breathtaking scoring rates, yet after somehow missing out last year to Lionel Messi on the back of Argentina winning the World Cup he may find himself trumped by Rodri following Spain’s triumph.
Qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup start in September but before then Haaland has to get back to terrifying Premier League defences with City. Thirty-eight goals was another remarkable effort last season yet things were definitely more difficult for the big No.9 – not helped by a broken foot that kept him out for two months.
His talent and brand are so big that he is always a first port of call for any TV debates. In his first year in English football Jamie Carragher said that he had joined the wrong club, and last season Roy Keane compared his all-round game to ‘almost a League Two player’.
Haaland knows that such reactionary takes are not present at the City Football Academy, yet they can still land on the striker. He addressed the Keane comments directly in one interview with Norwegian TV and spoke about criticism more generally in a press conference given before a Champions League game; “People say I’m good at scoring goals but I missed the biggest chance in the world a few days ago,” he smirked.
The timing of that press conference summed up the changed reaction to Haaland last season. In the week leading up to it he had scored six goals including five in the FA Cup win at Luton, yet the more pressing focus was a big miss against United in a derby he had scored in anyway. For a man of such phenomenal talent in front of goal, it had become more newsworthy when he misses.
If that clipped response suggests tetchiness, the whole performance was more rounded to show how the boy who had arrived in Manchester in 2022 with a reputation for spiky media interviews had matured. There were no attempts to shut down Real Madrid’s longstanding interest but confirmation that he is very happy at City, glided through as smoothly as his agent would have put it, as well as genuine insight into what makes him tick.
When Haaland talks, people listen – not least because it does not come often. The Norwegian reporters tasked with providing stories to their national papers could not believe their luck with an unexpected performance in front of the microphones from their talisman, being more used to asking Guardiola and other players about Haaland in a bid to interest readers at home.
Nobody quite knew why Haaland had chosen such a moment to speak, although it was hard not to draw a link to missing out on the Ballon d’Or to Messi where it felt like the biggest football achievements had not been enough to land the prize. At 23, here Haaland was presenting himself as a superstar off the pitch as well as on it.
“I’ve been missing, I missed a lot of chances,” he reflected. “I will still keep on missing chances, I will still keep on scoring goals, so yeah, I’ll probably miss a big chance in the future as well, and people are going to criticise me, but what can I do then?
“Should I think of that? No, just focus on scoring more goals and to help the team.”
All it needed was the performances to follow…except they didn’t. Haaland blanked in six of his next nine games, including crucial Premier League tests against Liverpool and Arsenal and both legs of the Champions League quarter-final defeat to Real Madrid; in the second leg, he went off injured after 90 minutes and missed not only extra time and penalties but also the FA Cup semi-final and a trip to Brighton.
There were important contributions when he did return – he came off the bench to score a crucial second at Nottingham Forest, smashed in four against Wolves and then bagged both in the first ever win at Spurs – but another blank came in the disappointing FA Cup Final defeat to United to end another successful season on a low note and he has since had to watch teammates revel in the international spotlight.
Expectations have gone up again, with Haaland becoming the most expensive player in Fantasy Premier League history for the new season at 15 per cent of the total budget for 15 players. In the real world, he will be scrutinised more than almost any other player in the world simply because of the reputation that he has built up.
The usual uncertainty surrounds Haaland as he begins his third season in the Premier League: can City have any more luck in extending his contract, and how will an expected Guardiola departure impact on that? How closely will Real Madrid continue to watch, having lapped up Mbappe on a free transfer this summer?
Then there are the more recent challenges that have popped up. Haaland needs to improve his record in the big games if he is to reclaim the mantle of being the most devastating player in the City side, with increased competition from Rodri and now Foden.
As usual, everything can be solved by goals. Whether he wants to assert himself as the central figure in a post-Guardiola City or wants to remind the rest of football why they should do everything possible to sign him, Haaland will know better than anyone that what sets him apart in the game is the volume of goals he can score and the number of games he can win.
As Foden and Rodri rest up from the European Championship, Haaland will be using pre-season to arrive at the Community Shield on August 10 to try and lay down a marker against United that will be clear all season. It may not have been his summer, but Haaland will be determined to do everything he can over the next six months to make the football world feel like it has been his year.