When Pep Guardiola tearfully claimed Manchester City could not replace the departing Sergio Agüero in May 2021, he didn’t just create a meme. Guardiola was soft-launching a global audition for his team’s new attacking talisman. An unsuccessful pursuit of Harry Kane in the summer of 2021 came between two title-winning seasons where Ilkay Gündogan (13) and Kevin De Bruyne (15) were the club’s top league goalscorers. Guardiola’s slick creative machine needed a new front man, and they found him in Erling Haaland.
Like Agüero before him – and in contrast to many of City’s most successful Pep-era signings – Haaland arrived as a bona fide superstar, a plug-and-play addition to an already stellar lineup. Whether he was a bargain is another question. The release clause paid was €60m (£51.2m), but some reports suggest Haaland’s five-year deal could cost the club in the region of £300m. And while there was an ominous logic to the move for City’s rivals, questions remained.
Just 21 when he arrived, Haaland had built his reputation on big numbers and raw physical attributes. Could he hold a place in Guardiola’s sophisticated system, where players are required to fulfil multiple roles? And would his new manager break with tradition and reshape his team to accommodate an all-out goalscorer? It was a problem he had experienced with Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Barcelona. The Swedish striker said Guardiola “bought a Ferrari, filled it up with diesel and drove it round the countryside”.
Would Haaland also struggle to hit top gear? An awkward, if enthusiastic display in the Community Shield in August 2022 raised concerns, but in his first league match at West Ham he displayed his killer instinct. Two precise runs in behind – the first to win a penalty, which he converted, and the second to spring on to a Kevin De Bruyne pass and finish effortlessly. The doubts evaporated; the goals did not. Haaland went on to score 36 times in 35 league appearances in his debut season – a Premier League record.
The goals often came in giddying bursts – three against Palace in 19 minutes, a lethal first-half hat-trick in a rout of Nottingham Forest. In the Manchester derby, another hat-trick delivered with dominant swagger, typified by this lunging finish to De Bruyne’s perfect cross. This generational goalscorer had successfully assimilated into a team stacked with creative talent, and was dunking on Premier League defences at will. One goal against Brighton was almost comical in its brute force, Haaland racing on to an Ederson clearance and bulldozing everyone in his path.
Guardiola does not construct route-one teams, but Haaland’s qualities offer City a second edge, another key on the chain to unpick defences. All but one of his 35 goals were scored from inside the box, where he is devastatingly accurate. Haaland can look like a deceptively simplistic player – he is very big, and exceptionally fast – but he also has great attacking awareness, a knack for being in the right place at the right time.
From bursting into the public consciousness with nine goals in one game for Norway Under-20s to taking his place at the top of our rankings, Haaland has kept his boyish love for football, a desire to score relentlessly, any way he can. Take this acrobatic finish against poor Southampton, or the moment he unlocked a new achievement against Chelsea. “I’ve never scored with my balls before,” he cheerfully revealed afterwards.
In the Champions League, Haaland stretched himself even further as City claimed that hitherto elusive European trophy. In the group stages against Dortmund, he scored a late winner by roundhouse-kicking the ball home at head height. His most devastating goal burst this year came against Leipzig in the last 16, scoring five goals in the space of 35 minutes before he was substituted, perhaps out of pity. Despite his domestic scoring exploits, Haaland seems to save an extra gear for Europe.
The 23-year-old’s Champions League scoring record is 40 goals in 35 games; he is one behind Agüero having played fewer than half as many games as the Argentinian. While Haaland became less prolific as City progressed towards the trophy, he was still a crucial presence. He scored twice in the quarter-final against Bayern Munich, the second a contest-killing counter-punch in the second leg back in Germany. Haaland also created a key goal at the Etihad; having found space on the left, he opted to cross for Bernardo Silva to head home and bring the treble a big step closer.
It was the sign of a subtle evolution, the target man tweaking his game to be more closely aligned with his teammates. In last season’s battles with title rivals Arsenal, Haaland set up three goals and scored two as City put on a finishing clinic. He scored the fourth at the Etihad – his 49th of the season – having already let his hair down, quite literally. It felt almost like a dig, an example of the sense of spontaneity Haaland has brought to a team often accused of lacking personality.
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Undoubtedly ambitious and driven by the chase for records and silverware, Haaland still cuts an unusual figure as the game’s new global superstar. While another contender for the throne, Kylian Mbappé, has become bogged down in politics at PSG, Haaland seems impossibly laid back, only making headlines for his leisurewear choices. If there were tactical questions around his move to City, his signing was a marketing no-brainer. An unproblematic hero for a club whose success and public image are more complicated, the striker with the world at his feet was also the boy in a sky-blue shirt whose father, Alfie, played at Maine Road.
Loved by fans after an extraordinary 18 months in Manchester, there is still room for Haaland to improve in this all-conquering team. Incredibly, there are still long spells in games when he can appear peripheral. His teammates could make better use of his pace and control in those small spaces behind the defence. He hasn’t scored against Brentford yet. On the international front, his failure to lead Norway to Euro 2024 was a disappointment. Yet even in that arena, he has 27 goals in 29 appearances. The numbers do not lie.
Haaland ended his first season with 52 goals, including 36 in the Premier League, breaking a record that was untouched since 1995. Even with City comparatively out of sync this season, his hit-rate has barely let up; overall it currently stands at 71 goals in 75 games. He is already 12th on the club’s all-time top scorer list, and there is little reason to think the goals and trophies will dry up any time soon. The question is not whether Haaland can stay on top of the world, but who on Earth can replace him.
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