Erl-y warning
Any sane team would lock Haaland down for the long term as City have done.
The only surprise has been the widespread surprise over the new, 10-year contract for Erling Haaland at Manchester City.
The 24-year-old Norwegian striker is a generational talent. One of those rare forces of nature for whom you push the boat out to give them what they ask for.
Haaland is the Gen Z equivalent of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. A ten-year deal would still take him up to an age where the elite players who look after themselves are still performing at the highest level.
And there are more ludicrous contracts. Take 32-year-old Neymar, negotiating an extended new deal worth £300million with Saudi club Al Hilal – despite playing just 428 minutes of football since he signed in August 2023.
Haaland, by comparison, makes perfect sense. It would have been a dereliction of duty had City not locked him down for the long term.
Now, with all his release clauses removed, they can relax as there is zero chance of their prize asset being spirited away by Real Madrid, Barcelona or any of the European superpowers.
It also suggests City are quietly confident that the outcome of their hearing into the 115 charges for alleged breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules – which they deny – will not result in the club being exiled from the top division.
So yes, they can build and inject optimism into a season of underachievement by whetting the appetite of their fans ahead of new season with Haaland the jewel in the crown of their rebuild. He will be the beacon to attract top talents for years to come, too.
New defenders are already on their way in the shape of Brazilian and Uzbek centre-backs Vitor Reis and Abdukodir Khusanov from Palmeiras and Lens respectively. Forward reinforcements are on the way in the form of Eintracht Frankfurt’s Omar Marmoush, whose mid-season arrival means he will be used to the Premier League by the time next season starts. Haaland will the support in attack he needs next season to underline his greatness.
Because the unspoken truth is that he is massively disrespected in English football. It happens often with elite sportsmen here. Fans get blase over their greatness. Harry Kane had rivals fans laughing when he targeted the Golden Boot at the 2018 World Cup ahead of Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, Griezmann and Luis Suarez. He was as good as his word and went on to ram the words of those who claimed he was a one-season wonder down their throats.
To disparage Haaland is madness when you consider he has scored 111 goals, in all competitions, in 126 games since his move to the Premier League in 2022.
When he plundered similar numbers at his former club Dortmund, the critics, sceptics and naysayers disparagingly suggested he’d been cleaning up in a lesser league. The Farmer’s League, they called it.
In his first season in England, Haaland’s 36 Premier League goals took him past the long-standing joint-records of Alan Shearer and Andrew Cole, to win the title in May 2023. From the get-go, Haaland was changing the game.
During that first season, he also netted goals in the Cup competitions to help City to the Treble. He’d end up with 52 in total. In 53 matches. In his debut campaign.
So here’s why he is disrespected.
Yes, he’d set a cruising altitude for himself that no other player could reach. But if he was not reaching that mark himself – even if he went two or three games without scoring – the doubters, remarkably, would come out from the shadows.
When he smashed 38 goals in 45 games to win another, record-breaking fourth title in a row for City and another Golden Boot for himself – many people shrugged their shoulders.
Some, even now, caveat his greatness by claiming he is a passenger without service. That he doesn’t link play or create goals out of nothing like an Alexander Isak or a Mohamed Salah. That he doesn’t even enter the conversation in relation to football’s hall of famers.
So even though he now has two Golden Boots in as many campaigns, he has shade thrown at him. With 16 goals he is two off this season’s Premier League top scorer, Salah, with every chance he could win the award for a third season in a row. Still they throw shade at him.
Still they say he isn’t as marketable as Kylian Mbappe (yes, really), that they’d rather build a team around the creative genius of Cole Palmer, that Haaland is monotonous and boring to watch.
They overlook the fact that the true measure of a marksman is his or her composure when they find themselves with their finger on the trigger. Some panic, some over-elaborate, some misjudge the angles, some allow the noise to get to them. Haaland doesn’t. In footballing terms, he remains a stone-cold killer.
Yes, Palmer is pure gold. But in City’s worst season under Pep Guardiola, Haaland has still scored more goals than his former Etihad team-mate.
So perhaps that ten year contract – which gives him the chance to break Alan Shearer’s all-time Premier League record of 260 goals – also hands Haaland the chance to rub a few noses in it.
Could he do it? With 79 top flight goals already, betting against him would be like making a deal with a troll under a bridge.
The new contract is ridiculous because he is. The future is exciting because he is. It is time to give him the respect he deserves.
