Erling

Haaland

A natural born goalscorer...

Erling Haaland joined City from Borussia Dortmund in July 2022, after penning a five-year deal which keeps him at the Etihad Stadium until the summer of 2027.

The son of former City player Alfie, Haaland junior is widely regarded as one of Europe’s best strikers and arrived at the Club with a formidable goalscoring reputation following impressive spells at Molde FK, Red Bull Salzburg and Dortmund.

An established Norwegian international, he scored 86 goals in 89 games in two-and-a-half seasons with the Black and Yellows, winning the German Cup and the Bundesliga Player of the Season award in 2020/21.

Haaland’s career so far has been characterised by one thing: goals. He has hit the back of the net at an astonishing rate in the six-years since his professional debut and his attributes mean he is the archetypal centre-forward in every sense of the word.

Strong, tall, quick, good in the air and capable of scoring a variety of goals off either foot, he is providing this City side with the option of an out and out striker that has been unavailable since Sergio Aguero’s departure.

Born in Leeds, where father Alfie was then plying his trade in the Premier League, the family moved to Bryne in southern Norway when the younger Haaland was three-years-old.

He joined his hometown club before the age of 10 and progressed through the youth set-up to make his debut in the Norwegian second tier three months shy of his 16th birthday.

A move to Molde followed and a winning goal off the bench on his debut was a sign of things to come. He ended the 2018 season as the Club’s top scorer, netting 12 goals in 25 league games, whilst still only 18 years of age.

His form in his homeland prompted Austrian champions Red Bell Salzburg to move for him in January 2019. He made five appearances in the second half of the campaign, but it was at the start of the following season that his career really took off and the wider world began to take notice of this prodigious scoring sensation.

Between August 2019 and September 2019, the striker hit the back of the net 17 times in nine games, including three hat-tricks, which included a treble on his Champions League debut against Genk.

By the time he joined Dortmund the following January, he had scored 28 goals in 22 appearances for Salzburg and he showed no signs of slowing down in the German Bundesliga.

A 23-minute hat-trick in a 5-3 win over Augsburg got the Norwegian up and running in yellow and black and, with braces in his next two games, he became the first player in Bundesliga history to score five goals in his first two matches and seven in his first three.

Haaland ended the 2019/20 campaign with 44 goals in 40 club appearances for Salzburg and Dortmund and followed that up by scoring 41 times in as many games in 2020/21.

That included a four-goal haul against Hertha Berlin and a brace against Sevilla which saw him become the fastest and youngest player to reach 20 goals in the Champions League.

Dortmund would finish third behind Red Bull Leipzig and Bayern Munich, but Haaland was on target twice against the former in a 4-1 German Cup final win to ensure he ended the season with silverware.

His performances across the course of that campaign were enough to earn him the Bundesliga Player of the Season award, whilst he also finished as top scorer in the Champions League to win the competition’s Forward of the Season prize.

Haaland was restricted to 30 appearances in an injury-disrupted 2021/22 campaign, but still managed to hit the back of the net on 29 occasions and, in November, he scored his 50th Bundesliga goal to become the youngest and quickest player to reach that landmark tally.

It has been a similar story on the international stage, where the striker registered 18 goals in 20 games for Norway prior to joining City. 

He made his debut as a 19-year-old in a 2-0 victory over Malta in September 2019 and scored his first goal as he won his third cap against Austria 12 months later.

The following month he claimed his first international hat-trick in a 4-0 defeat of Romania, en route to winning the Golden Boot for the 2020/21 UEFA Nations League.

A natural born goalscorer, Haaland has continued his prolific goal-scoring form with City and by February 2023, had scored an incredible 31 goals for the Club.

Indeed, the Norwegian’s strike against Bournemouth - his 27th goal of 2022/23 - saw him become the highest scoring City player across a single Premier League season.

It’s incredible milestones such as this which saw Haaland included in the FIFPro World XI for 2022 at the end of February 2023.

One month later, he became just the third player in history – and the first for nine years – to score five goals in a single UEFA Champions League game as City beat RB Leipzig 7-0 at the Etihad Stadium.

He hit his 45th goal of the season during the UEFA Champions League quarter-final first leg victory over Bayern Munich - meaning he surpassed Ruud van Nistelrooy and Mohamed Salah as the men to have scored most goals for a Premier League club across all competitions in a single season.

And after an incredible debut season with City full of accolades and goals, Haaland won his first Premier League title with three games of the season remaining. 

To continue his outstanding first season in English football, Haaland won the Double after City lifted the FA Cup trophy following our 2-1 win over Manchester United at Wembley Stadium.

And it was the fairy tale ending for his debut season in sky blue as Haaland was part of our Treble-winning team after City’s 1-0 win over Inter in the final of the Champions League. 

Start as you mean to go on for Haaland who won his fourth trophy in sky blue at the start of the 2023/24 campaign. 

He scored his penalty kick in our shoot-out win over Sevilla in the UEFA Super Cup to help City win the European showpiece for the first time in the Club’s history.