WHO’LL MAKE THE CUT?
Hungry to hit the top even as a kid, £125m Erling Haaland is now wanted by Europe’s top clubs. But in a market still hit by the pandemic ...
THE most-wanted man in European football will be at Manchester City on Tuesday night, whether or not Pep Guardiola thinks he can afford him. Erling Haaland arrives in the country of his birth, the next £ 125million footballer off the rank, with Borussia Dortmund ready to take on City in the Champions League quarter-finals.
He and Paris Saint- Germain’s Kylian Mbappe are seen as heirs apparent to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the superstars who have dominated world football for the last decade.
And he has all the credentials for footballer royalty, even at the age of 20. His agent is probably the best-known in the world, Mino Raiola, famous in the UK principally for his management of Paul Pogba and outspoken interventions on his client’s future.
His dad, Alf-Inge, is the former Leeds and Manchester City player, the defender who Roy Keane famously hit with a brutal challenge, high on his knee, which led to a fivematch ban for the United midfielder and a protracted legal case as to whether it had ended Haaland senior’s career.
Most importantly, Haaland has facts to back up the fanfare: he was quicker to 100 goals in top-class football than either Messi or Ronaldo. He has already scored 20 Champions League goals in only 14 games and 39 goals this season, 33 for Dortmund. Week after week, he is causing jaws to drop. The opening nine minutes against Bayern Munich last month were a case in point. He simply bulldozed his way through the Bayern defence to give Dortmund a two-goal lead, though they would eventually lose 4-2.
Jan Age Fjortoft, the Norwegian international who played up front for Middlesbrough and Swindon and who now works for Norwegian TV, is a long-standing family friend, having played with Alf-Inge for the national team. ‘We watched him score those goals against Bayern, we were shaking our heads and thinking, “What are we part of?” ’ said Fjortoft. ‘As a small nation we’re very proud of our player and he’s our main man and when we see him making headlines all round the world it makes us very proud.’
ALONG with Robert Lewandowski at Bayern and Harry Kane, he is part of a growing breed of old-fashioned centre forwards. ‘In Germany, the No 9 is coming back,’ said Fjortoft. ‘ Mbappe isn’t a typical No9, he can do everything. But Erling is this typical new No9 but a developed No 9 with power in his runs, phenomenal physique and this hunger to score goals.
‘It’s very symbolic that Messi and Cristiano are out of the quarter-finals of the Champions League for the first time in 16 years. And you have these two young kids coming through and we pundits love that. But I think both Mbappe and Haaland are the real deal.
‘Mbappe has won the World Cup but you have two players with great passion for the game. They have a great attitude, which is very underestimated. I’ve known his father Alfie for his whole football life and Erling has a fantastic attitude. What he puts in every day to improve himself as a player is amazing. You see the end result on the pitch.’
Born in Leeds, Haaland grew up in Bryne, his father’s home town with a population of 12,000, five miles from the North Sea and on the shore of Lake Froylandsvatnet, a Scandinavian idyll, far away from the hurly- burly of modern football and the £125m he is expected to cost if sold this summer. Like his dad, he joined the local team, Bryne FK, but by the age of 16, his super t al ent already evident, he had moved to Molde, Norway’s dominant club, who were then managed by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Chief executive of Molde, Oystein Neerland, recalls: ‘Solskjaer did a very good job building the physical and mental part of his game. And as a former striker he had good advice and inspiration. He got on very, very well with Erling.’ They had to temper his output initially. ‘The first year in Molde he grew 20cm (8in) in one year, so he needed to control his training,’ said Neerland. ‘Then he started also to build his physique.’ Now the centre forward he most resembles is Wayne Rooney, his physical strength and sheer belligerence being a key factor in his goalscoring. Haaland also i mpressed off the pitch. ‘ One typical thing he would do, which was special compared to other players, was that after training he’d knock on my door,’ says Neerland. ‘I was director of the club and he would say, “Hi, Oystein. Do you have five minutes?” No problem. I was thinking, “What are we going to talk about?” And he would ask me, “What’s it like to be a CEO in a club? Do you like your job?” He was 17 years old. I never had other young players visit my office for conversations l i ke t hat. That i mpressed me quite a l ot. He wanted to know everything about football. Of course, he had his father around him. He was relaxed on the pitch, always wanted to win, never seemed to be afraid.’
Erling’s team have always picked the club where he can develop best
BUSINESS-wise then, he should be across all the decisions being made at present. Last week Raiola and Haaland senior were in Barcelona and Madrid, meeting club executives. No matter that Erling is under contract until 2024 and Dortmund say they won’t sell this summer. Manchester United, City, Chelsea and the Spanish giants are all making plans if Dortmund’s resolution wavers.
Conventional wisdom says that when either Barca, who are £850m in debt, or Real Madrid come calling, they get what they want. ‘I’ve never got the impression that is part of their analysis of where he is going,’ said Fjortoft. ‘I knew about all the clubs that wanted him when he went to Salzburg and when he went to Dortmund. There were a lot of clubs that wanted him and he chose to go where he would develop.
And the speculation about his dad and Roy Keane [ meaning they would reject United] ... the team around Erling are much more professional than that.
‘The team around him, with Alfie the main man, are always choosing the place where they could develop and they have always done that. Being born in Leeds, his dad in English football, I guess Erling will at one time in his career love to play in English football.
‘So far, it’s all about development and the country is not the main thing. That’s why they chose Dortmund. He scored a hat-trick in his first game against Augsburg. I was on German TV that Sunday morning and I said, “I think it’s good t o wake up t oday as a 19-year-old in Dortmund when you scored three on your debut instead of waking up in English football, at this time of your career”. OK, t here i s unbelievable mania around him now but it is still quite calm in Dortmund. Most people in Norway have no idea where Dortmund is! He’s around young players; he’s driving some of these young players like Jude Bellingham and Giovanni Reyna to training because they don’t have their driving licence. It’s perfect.
‘ The people around him have shown all his career that they have picked the alternative where he can develop most. They did that at Molde, they did that at Red Bull Salzburg, they did that at Dortmund.’
Next season his contract has a release clause at € 75m (£ 64m), which would seem cheap and worth hanging on a season to save yourself the best part of £100m. But there is uncertainty as to whether it will be legally enforceable. ‘There are two alternatives,’ says Fjortoft. ‘Dortmund are in the Champions League next season or Dortmund are not. So let’s say he does make a move in the summer. It’s very interesting to see how clubs come out of this coronavirus. There is Dortmund losing a lot of money, a number of clubs losing a lot of money.’
The question, which is the one Guardiola posed, is just who has £125m to spend right now. Bear in mind City’s record transfer fee paid is £ 64m for Ruben Dias, though Kevin De Bruyne may ultimately have cost more once all the instalments had been met. The reports that UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules will be relaxed may help. But even City may not want to go over £100m post-pandemic.
FJORTOFT points out that Dortmund are in the German Cup semi-final, where they play Holstein Kiel, and are currently fifth in the Bundesliga. ‘If Dortmund win the cup and they’re among the top four [and qualify for the Champions League], I would say it’s most likely he stays. If they’re not in the Champions League, Dortmund will still be desperate to keep him. This is their future. But we know football and there are dynamic processes that will happen.’
Haaland has been accused of arrogance, with his one- word answers in TV interviews. And he sparked a mini-brawl by celebrating in the face of Sevilla keeper Bono after scoring a retaken penalty in the last-16 tie. In mitigation, Bono had done the same to him after saving the first penalty, which was retaken because the goalkeeper was off his line.
‘ He has the “it” factor as a player,’ said Fjortoft. ‘You see that in interviews. That is not arrogance. He just likes to play with journalists. Never ask him a yes or no question because then you get a yes or no answer. When he was asked what did you say to t he keeper [Bono, when celebrating] he said, “I don’t know. I just told him what he told me”. He ended up with a yellow card but he’s a great kid.’
Great kid he may be, but all of Europe is scrambling to own him.
If Dortmund get in the top four I think he will stay there another year