Dortmund (Germany) (AFP)
The Bundesliga and Europe have just witnessed, in one year, the emergence of a giant: Erling Haaland, who faces Manchester City with Dortmund on Tuesday, has everything to become the football superstar of the 2020s, after dusk predictable from Messi and Ronaldo.
At 20, this Norwegian born in Leeds - his father Alf Inge Haaland, international, played in Nottingham Forest and Manchester City - continues to accumulate records.
With Austrian club Salzburg, in the fall of 2019 he first became the first U-20 player to score at least one goal in his first five Champions League appearances.
For his first group stage, he scored 8 times, including a hat-trick against Genk, which made him the third youngest player to achieve this feat in C1, after legends Raul and Wayne Rooney.
Too good to stay in the city of Mozart, the child prodigy is transferred from January 2020 to Dortmund.
Where he becomes a phenomenon in 15 days, with ... seven achievements for his first three matches!
He is also the youngest player to score 20 times in the Champions League, in just 14 matches (Ronaldo had reached 20 goals after 56 matches, Messi after 40).
- "Van Basten and LeBron James" -
This season, he was also the first player in history to score four consecutive braces in the premier competition.
Manchester City will have to be careful, the series is underway ...
And for good measure, he is always before these quarter-finals at the top of the scorers standings with ten goals scored in ... six matches, since he missed two group stage matches.
"The emergence of the immense talent of the immense Haaland can be scary, with his airs of a Van Basten who would have swallowed LeBron James for breakfast", commented last year the French daily L'Equipe, after a double from Haaland in the round of 16 first leg against Paris SG.
This colossus (1.94 m) with a face cut like a billhook, which encircles his blonde hair with a thin black band, impresses with his extraordinary physical power, his technique in movement and his supersonic speed (the Sky diffuser ensures the '' having timed one day in 6.64 sec at 60 meters, 3 / 10th of the world record, but with a rolling start all the same!).
His warrior body language and influence on the team will furthermore make him a natural leader on the pitch, wherever he goes after Dortmund.
- "I like English football" -
Because its future in the Ruhr is uncertain to say the least.
In contract until 2024, he is already courted by the biggest teams on the continent, ready to take out the checkbook so as not to let it slip away to the competition.
And if Borussia, current fifth in the Bundesliga, fail as is now likely to qualify for the Champions League, no one can imagine Haaland going a season without shining in Europe.
For now, Real Madrid seem to be holding the rope (Erling's father met with managers last week), but young Erling has never hidden his attraction to the Premier League.
"All my life I have dreamed of playing for one of the best clubs in the world, and I especially love English football," he said one day while still in Salzburg.
In England, he already has a contact: his compatriot Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, the coach of Manchester United, who was his coach during his debut in the Norwegian 1st division with Molde (2017/2018).
And his father has his entries in Manchester City, one of the few clubs to have the financial power to be able to afford the prodigy.
© 2021 AFP