Manchester City faces Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday, during the 5th day of the Champions League, the opportunity for Erling Haaland to find his former club.
Before exploding in Germany, the Norwegian striker had notably scored nine goals against Honduras at the U20 World Cup in 2019.
We found several players in this meeting, which ended with a score of 12-0.
A last group match of a World Cup for the under 20s, between two teams almost eliminated at kick-off.
On paper, this Norway-Honduras of May 30, 2019 had everything to end up in football history limbo.
However, the 5,646 spectators gathered in the Arena in Lublin witnessed both the biggest success (12-0) in 22 editions of the U20 World Cup and the first international brilliance of Erling Haaland, scorer nine times .
“After the first two games lost, we knew we had to win, but that even by winning widely, it would be difficult to pass, recalls Igor Aase, then assistant coach of the Norwegian selection.
We put in the best team and Erling was on fire.
I will always remember it.
To score nine goals, even if it's not against the best team, is so huge!
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Two years ago, Erling Haaland netted a casual NINE GOALS in a single game for Norway U20s against Honduras.
Didn't take long for everyone to know his name...
pic.twitter.com/HzniyRi2YC
— COPA90 (@Copa90) May 31, 2021
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Mute and rather discreet against Uruguay (1-3) then against New Zealand (0-2), the now cyborg Manchester City needed only one meeting to finish "pichichi" of the competition.
That's good, it was also his last, since Norway finished less good third best in pool and did not see the round of 16 of an event won by Ukraine.
But he didn't need more to smash the record of Brazilian Adailton, a future ephemeral Parisian: six pawns against South Korea (10-3) during the 1997 U20 World Cup.
Upgraded by a year, rare representative of the natives of the year 2000 in the middle of 1999, the native of Leeds had just finished his first half-season outside the Norwegian borders, which we will qualify as an apprenticeship: transferred in January 2019 from Molde to Salzburg, he had only played five games with the Austrian club, for a small achievement.
“He was not the star he became, but we knew his enormous potential, continues Igor Aase, now at Skeid (Norwegian D2).
But to say that I saw him become as strong as he is today is difficult to say.
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He would have liked to score a tenth
The frame drawn, let's dwell on his match, therefore on his nine goals (7th, 20th, 36th on a penalty he caused, 43rd, 50th, 67th, 77th, 88th, 90th), eight from the left and one from the right.
Already well planted in the ground, but not yet enough to send his opponents flying like the unfortunate Adam Webster from Brighton this weekend, Haaland clearly enjoyed himself against an overwhelmed opponent, reduced to 10 then to 9, and to a guardian not really in a state of grace.
Cut crosses, nice openings and well-exploited opposing weaknesses….
Nothing mythical but beautiful work, with a small weakness for the fourth achievement, an incredible strike from donkey from Poitou, Paul Le Guen or Federico Valverde style.
"What I remember from this match is that he was quite annoyed not to have put a tenth", slipped in a nostalgic smile Pål Arne Johansen, his coach from U18 to U20, on the Manchester City website .
“One of the things that I like about him is that he is a player who does not let go, who runs on all the balls”, engages Elison Rivas.
The current defender of CDS Vida (Honduran L1) was in the front row to follow the prowess of the mutant in the making.
If many of his teammates did not react when
20 Minutes
asked them to come back to this painful page, without really being blamed for them, Rivas quickly replied: "Talking about this match is normal, you shouldn't feel bad about it, life goes on, he says.
As they say: God gives his best battles to his best warriors.
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“We knew he would become a great player”
In the story, Haaland appears as the scourge of God, the Norwegian Attila, which suits him pretty well as a nickname.
“In fact, he was not so well known at the time, there were players much more recognized than him in this World Cup, continues Rivas.
But when we saw him play, with the power he exuded, we knew he would become a great player!
From the moment he scored his first goal, I saw that we had a phenomenon in front of us.
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Muhammad Taqi was also ideally placed to watch the Bryne-trained kid in the Lublin Arena.
The Singaporean referee will never forget one of the two meetings he led in this U20 World Cup, a week after Tahiti – Senegal (0-3).
He remembers "the physical strength of both teams", "young players who played with a lot of determination, passion and energy, which meant that my interventions had to be precise so as not to disrupt the course of the meeting" .
Taqi had to issue a red for a second warning against Axel Gomez, guilty of an elbow in an aerial duel (57th) when the score was already 7-0, then sent off directly in stoppage time Everson Lopez, author of a hip tackle full of violence and spite on the Norwegian Markovic.
No one asked him for his shirt
And Haaland, by the way?
“I didn't know him before the match and so I was surprised by his performance, admits Taqi, who will officiate on the VAR side during the World Cup in Qatar.
Obviously, when a player scores nine goals in an international tournament, he is well on his way to making a name for himself and making headlines.
In this match alone, he showed his potential.
I sincerely thought that a player with such physical ability and a keen eye for goal would very quickly become a young prodigy.
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The kind of star whose opponent tears off the jersey at the end of the match.
"No one had the time or the courage to ask him," says Elison Rivas.
We were all inconsolable.
Haaland's dazzling progress in the months that followed may have helped the Hondurans a little to put this huge rouste into perspective, targeted by a FIFA investigation - due to its unprecedented scale - which was quickly dismissed.
Author of a huge first part of the 2019-2020 season, the Norwegian, voted player of the year in Austria, will leave Salzburg in the winter transfer window for Borussia Dortmund.
The machine was launched, and the already sprightly center-forward was going to take a few more shirt sizes to reach his 1.94 m and his (approximately) 90 kg.
“When I saw him again a year after the U20 World Cup, he looked much more like what he has become today, testifies the Norwegian technician Igor Aase.
He changed naturally but also because he is one of the most professional players I have known, in preparation, recovery.
He is very attentive to everything that can make him better.
And then, he is fantastic, humble.
I have absolutely nothing negative to say about him.
Opposing defenders and goalkeepers do, however.
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Soccer
Erling Haaland
Manchester City
Borussia Dortmund
Champions League
Norway
Honduras