ERLING Haaland was once a “little guy” with a buzz cut who couldn’t score for the first team of his home town side in Norway.
Now the 6ft 4in Manchester City striker is football’s most deadly predator, breaking the Premier League goal-scoring record with seven games to spare.
With his long blonde locks lapping his shoulders, he fired home against Arsenal on Wednesday to notch up 33 Prem strikes.
In all, he’s scored 49 times on his debut season in England.
On Twitter, former Five Live presenter Peter Allen branded City “a petrodollar powered juggernaut driven by a Nordic goal monster easily beating everyone”.
But even those who aren’t fans can admire the work that has gone into his transformation from a lanky teen to Viking marauder.
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Here, Grant Rollings looks at how the 22-year-old became a goal-scoring machine.
Calorie-controlled killer
It is hard to believe now but as a baby Erling was a small, thin boy.
Over the years he has worked hard to bulk up his 6ft 4in tall frame.
He eats his dad’s home-made lasagne before every home game, wolfs down cow’s heart and liver and drinks milk laced with kale, which he calls “my magic potion”, to maintain a 6,000-calorie-a-day diet.
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Erling also pays for his own chef, who cooks up a Cristiano Ronaldo-inspired lunch of boiled fish and vegetables.
The young player’s development was undermined by growth spurts which meant he suffered injuries.
To prevent them, he installed a £50,000 walk-in cryotherapy chamber in house in Cheshire and takes regular ice baths.
He spends hours in the gym every day honing his six-pack, earning him the nickname The Terminator.
It has paid off because defenders bounce off the powerful player when they try to bring him down.
It has paid off because defenders bounce off the powerful player when they try to bring him down.
Man City manager Pep Guardiola called the Norwegian a “machine”.
Nearly two million rival fans signed a petition calling for Erling to be deported because he’s a “robot.”
Not a Jack the Lad
ERLING is very different from City’s most expensive-ever signing, £100million England forward Jack Grealish.
While Jack is often seen out on the town with his pals and girlfriend, the Norwegian keeps a low profile with his 19-year-old girlfriend Isabel Haugseng Johansen.
It was during a trip back home to Scandinavia around two years ago that he fell for Isabel, who, like him, had been part of the Bryne FK team’s football academy.
Erling is not one for partying or boasting about his exploits, preferring to do his talking on the pitch.
Ex-coach Alf Ingve Berntsen said: “In our part of the country we used to have a lot of farmers. People had to work very hard and not speak too much.
“So it’s in our genetics. It’s better to do the work than to talk a lot. So Erling is a typical person from our region.”
The player, though, thinks he’s been able to adapt to the laddish Premier League.
He said: “My father spent ten years in England so he kind of brought me up to have a bit of English banter.”
Since moving to Manchester last summer, though, pals back in Norway have apparently seen less of their golden boy.
Bryne player Robert Undheim says: “We see little of him. I think he has cut out a lot of people he knows and is halfway friends with.
“But he has a very good team around him that is easy to relate to. That makes a lot of sense, I think.”
Self-belief in his DNA
Even though Erling was incredibly quick and skilful, few people in his home town thought he’d go on to be a superstar – apart from the player himself.
This week classmate Robert Undheim, who was replaced when a 15-year-old Erling made his debut for Bryne football club in 2016, revealed: “In high school he said he was going to be the best in the world in football.
“People made fun of him. But he meant it. One hundred per cent.”
His former coach Alfe Ingve Berntsen said: “Erling was the best when he was a little guy, but we didn’t think when I began to coach him when he was seven that he would become top scorer in the Champions League.”
Erling never scored in his 16 first team games for Bryne.
But his pace attracted the attention of Manchester United legend Ole Gunnar Solskjaer when he was manager of Norwegian side Molde.
He saw his potential and signed him as a 16-year-old, teaching the youngster how to head the ball.
He then joined Austria’s Red Bull Salzburg in 2019.
A year later he moved to Borussia Dortmund in Germany, before joining Man City last summer.
Football farm
THE striker isn’t the first top flight player off the Haaland production line.
He was born in West Yorkshire when his dad, Alfie, was playing for Leeds United in England’s top division.
Athleticism and mental toughness are in Erling’s DNA.
Alfie was brave enough to get into an on-field feud with Manchester United hardman Roy Keane, while his mum Gry Marita Braut was a Norwegian heptathlon champ.
At the age of three, Erling moved to Bryne in Norway, where generations of the Haaland family are from. It is a farming community, and in the summer Erling has been known to help out his maternal great-uncle, former Norway international Gabriel Hoyland, with his pigs and potatoes.
He regularly returns to see his older brother Astor and sister Gabrielle, while his dad has helped to manage his career.
Erling’s relentless drive to improve came from a desire to be better than his footballer dad, who also played for Man City.
Explaining his motivation, he said: “When I was young it was getting better than my father and getting as good as I can.
“Now there is something inside me that just thinks about football all the time, about what I can do better.”
Money-making machine
THE world’s most in-form striker has enough star quality for big brands to pay big bucks so they can be linked to him.
He has a £20million deal with Nike, earned a reported £2million from Samsung and was paid around £1million by luxury watch firm Breitling.
He has spent some of that money on a string of luxury cars, including a £300,000 Rolls-Royce Cullinan and a £120,000 Carbon Black Audi RS 6.
He also flies on private jets and splashes out on good food, reportedly adding a £25,000 tip to a £400,000 bill at a restaurant in Greece.
City pay him a reported £385,000 a week, with some suggestions that bonuses are worth another couple of hundred grand.
Bryne, a coastal town of just 12,000 people, is cashing in on the association with their most famous citizen.
There is talk of building an Erling Haaland museum to attract tourists who already visit to see the mural and statue of the striker and to buy shirts from the club shop.
Local businessman Inge Brigt Aarbakke said: “Imagine a place where people can come and look at the shirts he has used in the different clubs, not least the match balls he has scored his hat tricks with.
“I’m convinced that families on holiday would want to visit Bryne. The children would want to see where Erling grew up.”
Getting some shut-eye
THE athlete is dedicated to the trend of following the body’s natural sleep pattern – known as the circadian cycle.
He revealed: “The first thing I do in the morning is to get some sunlight in my eyes. It is good for circadian rhythm.”
Erling won’t touch his smart phone or any other electronic device two hours before bed time and at night he filters out blue light from digital screens with special spectacles.
He said: “I see this as key to improving performance by even just a few percentages. It’s a matter of mentality.”
The striker is so wrapped up in the Champions League that his morning alarm plays the competition’s anthem.
It is having the right effect because Erling is the top scorer this season with a dozen goals so far.
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He knows that City’s United Arab Emirates billionaire owner Sheikh Mansour is paying him a fortune to win the most coveted silverware in club football.
Erling said: “The club want to win the Champions League. They didn’t bring me in to win the Premier League because they already know how to win it.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
