How I Became Erling Haaland

In 2001, a Leeds United midfielder named Alfie Haaland got his knee wrecked by a tackle so infamous it's still talked about today. His career was never really the same after that. Nineteen years later, his son would be scoring more goals per game than anyone in the history of the sport. This is that story. Erling Haaland was actually born in Leeds, England, while his dad was still playing there. But the family moved back to Brine, a small town in Norway, when Erling was three. Brine is not a football factory, it's a farming town. And that is exactly where he grew up, kicking a ball around a place nobody was scouting. He joined Brine FK's academy, his dad's old club, and started smashing scoring records almost immediately. At five years old, apparently, he could already outrun and outjump kids twice his age. By his teens, Norwegian clubs were starting to notice this ridiculously tall, ridiculously fast striker who just would not stop scoring. 2017, Haaland signs for Molde, then managed by a certain Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. It's Solskjaer who hands him his senior debut and keeps faith in him as a teenager. But before any of that, there was one afternoon in Norway that made the rest of the world sit up. Playing for Norway's under-20s at the 2019 World Cup, Haaland scored nine goals in a single game against Honduras. Nine. In one match. It's still a World Cup record at any age level. That performance was impossible to ignore. Red Bull Salzburg signed him a few months later. He scored on his debut, then kept scoring in the league and in the Champions League At a rate nobody in Europe could quite explain. Within half a season, half the continent's biggest clubs were calling. January 2020, Borussia Dortmund win the race for him. He comes on as a substitute for his debut against Augsburg. He scores a hat-trick, in 18 minutes, off the bench. It wasn't a fluke either. He kept doing it, season after season, becoming one of the most feared strikers in the Bundesliga before he'd even turned 21. Around this time, people started noticing the other side of Haaland. The cross-legged, meditation pose, goal celebration. The extremely specific diet, he's talked openly about eating things like bull testicles and organ meats as part of his recovery routine. The ice baths, the breathing work, the almost monk-like discipline. Teammates describe him as quiet, private and completely obsessed with the process, not the fame. Summer 2022. Manchester City activate his release clause, which was reportedly around £51 million. A price that now looks like an outright bargain. Plenty of pundits wondered if he'd struggled to adapt to the Premier League's physicality. He answered that in his very first season. 36 league goals in 38 games. A new Premier League single-season scoring record in his debut year in England. Man City also won the treble that season, the Premier League, the FA Cup and the Champions League, and Haaland was the top scorer of that entire Champions League campaign. Think about the shape of this story. A father whose career was cut short by one brutal tackle. A son who grew up in a small farming town nobody was scouting. Nine goals in a single World Cup match. A hat-trick off the bench on his professional debut. A Premier League scoring record in his first season in England. Erling Haaland didn't just inherit his father's love of the game. He went and broke nearly every record his father's generation thought was permanent. Who should we cover next? Drop a name below. New story every week.