Top clubs line up for beauty contest to tempt Haaland
borussia Dortmund striker and agent Raiola hold upper hand in the Europe-wide battle for game’s hottest property
There is no doubt that Manchester City would like to sign Erling Haaland. There is also no doubt that work is taking place right now to try to decide the future of the most exciting young centre-forward in world football – whether that involves him joining City, Chelsea, Real Madrid or someone else. Or, indeed, staying one more season with Borussia Dortmund.
There are two other things we know for certain. Haaland’s agent, Mino Raiola, will be key to what happens next and – if it is anything like the same “process” which took Haaland from Red Bull Salzburg to Dortmund in January 2020 – it will not be a sudden decision.
That move was six months in the making, and involved a lengthy process in which Raiola urged every club interested in Haaland to make a presentation to the striker in person. They were also encouraged to produce a dossier of how they saw his career developing.
The assumption was that Manchester United were the favourites, ahead of RB Leipzig and Juventus, not least because they spoke to Haaland more than anyone else. The reality was that his advisers always knew the Bundesliga was a more likely destination than the Premier League then, with Raiola believing young players can get lost in English football, where there is little time and a lot of exposure.
Raiola later said that rather than brief that they had pulled out of the deal, United should ask themselves why Haaland chose not to join them.
Raiola ran the same “beauty contest” routine when it came to Matthijs de Ligt leaving Ajax for Juventus, with the defender even drawing up a “pros and cons” list on the offers he received. Such an approach is not unusual in football, especially when it comes to young players, although, with Haaland, the interest is going to be even more intense this summer.
It helps that Raiola has a taste for the dramatic. A lover of James Bond movies he has – like Jose Mourinho – often framed football in terms of films. “People see the transfer, and it’s like when you make a movie, and you go to the cinema and you see the movie,” he once said. “But making a movie maybe took two years or a year, and it’s the same with a transfer. The transfer is all those scenes put together in a movie.”
In saying that, Raiola also believes that some deals exist “in the moment” and when an opportunity comes knocking it is best to seize it immediately. It could be that a club cotton on to this by making an offer at the end of this season that is too good for Dortmund and Haaland to
resist. It is also in keeping with the way Chelsea and City, in particular, operate that they do not involve themselves in bidding wars.
Those close to Haaland have insisted there is no release clause in his contract, which runs until June 2024. That has been disputed by other sources, who claim one becomes active at the end of the 2021-22 season, which would allow him to go for €75million (£64million). If true, it means a club could well make an offer in excess of that figure this summer, which would undoubtedly tempt Dortmund.
After all, if that release clause exists, it is substantially below Haaland’s value, even in a transfer market that is expected to suffer from Covid-19 deflation.
Dortmund, who have worried more about the future of Jadon Sancho and exacting the right price for the England international, are relaxed about the situation, as are Haaland and Raiola. Indeed, the 20-year-old Norwegian has learnt from another of Raiola’s clients, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, about the importance of self-confidence.
“He gave Haaland this conviction – if you are good, you can say that you are good,” Raiola has said. “And the Scandinavians have, and maybe the Scottish have it a little bit, this thing to be too humble, too nice. Scandinavians would never say ‘I’m the best’. The Dutch say, ‘We are the best, we invented football’. The social impact Zlatan has had across Scandinavia is that you can be successful and have a big mouth.”
The mention of Ibrahimovic also leads to a possible complication in any deal to take Haaland to City: the antipathy that exists between Raiola and Pep Guardiola after the latter’s decision to bomb Ibrahimovic out of Barcelona. “I said Guardiola is a dog, but he’s the best trainer in the world. I don’t hate him,” Raiola said.
The agent respects Guardiola’s achievements, although whether the City manager feels the same about him is another issue. Either way, it would be remarkable if a potential deal collapsed because of a personality clash.
The fact is that Haaland has a rich choice of options, and it does not hurt his cause that he faces City in the Champions League quarterfinals next week. Impress there, and that beauty contest could become even more crowded.