Abraham P. Romero
Updated Sunday, March 10, 2024-02:10
A Nordic striker with a certain virtue for scoring will always be
The
Thor
of (insert team here)
.
The topic is clear.
That is why in today's football there is no
Thor
of the ball like
Erling Braut Haaland
.
Thus, with the full name, which sounds more powerful.
A giant forward,
194 centimeters tall
, with long
blonde
hair , who drinks
two liters of milk a day
and scores more goals than anyone on the planet.
And perhaps for that reason, because
Thor
had already been awarded, the protagonist of these lines has had no choice but to embrace a more common, more folksy, more natural, more Galician name:
Xurxo
.
Jørgen Strand Larsen
, well, with the full name, with power, is also
Norwegian
, like Haaland.
He was also born in 2000
,
in February, five months before the Manchester City attacker.
He is also a giant, although in his case at
193 centimeters
, one less.
He doesn't have long, straight, blonde hair, but rather
dark, curly, and short hair
.
And he doesn't drink milk, he eats octopus.
He said it: more folksy, less God.
Larsen is not
Thor
, he is
Xurxo
, sponsored by the fans and the dressing room of a
Celta de Vigo
team of which he is now the flag and top scorer before landing this afternoon at the Santiago Bernabéu to play against
Real Madrid
.
Xurxo, you can imagine, is the Galician translation of Jorge and Jørgen, a consequence of the footballer's rapid adaptation to Galicia and the League, of which he is also one of its great scorers.
He accumulates
9 goals
, tied with
Vinicius, En-Nesyri or Iñaki Williams
, 7 goals behind
Bellingham
, suspended for the next two games, 6 behind
Mayoral
, injured for the remainder of the season, and 5 behind
Morata
.
That is to say, the Norwegian can still be in the fight for the top positions in the Pichichi.
Beyond the comparisons, always odious, the reality is that the surnames Larsen and Haaland have been quite close during the 24 years of life of the two footballers.
The Celta player would be the Norwegian center forward with the highest
market value
(15 million) if the
citizen
(180) did not exist. They share a call in the Norwegian senior team and played together in the lower categories of their country.
In the
2017 U17 European Championship
, for example, they fell in the group stage and faced, among others, the England of
Phil Foden and Jadon Sancho
.
Larsen with the number 10 and as a center forward and Haaland with the 14 playing as a left winger.
Mediterranean character
The passage of time distanced them, one towards the top of world football and the other towards constant work to carve out a future.
Larsen went through the
Milan
youth team , where he was trained by
Gattuso
and began to be infected by the Mediterranean character that has now made life easier for him in Spain.
«
He has a great sense of humor
.
"He is not the typical Scandinavian guy that you can imagine at first," he says from Vigo, where he arrived in the summer of 2022 from Dutch club Groningen in exchange for
12 million euros
.
In a season and a half in Galicia he already speaks Spanish "almost perfectly" and has become fond of
octopus and seafood
.
At first it was a little difficult for him to establish himself as a player, also pressured by the amount that had been paid for him.
He was not indisputable and did not make his debut in the League until matchday 13 of last year.
But this course everything has changed.
He has been
a starter in each and every one of the 27 days
of the League and has better understood how to attack and defend in Spanish football.
He has never lacked his physique, he has worked since childhood, when he combined soccer with tennis, ice hockey and golf, and he has gained in endurance.
On the horizon, a dream that he does not hide: to play in the Premier League and, if possible, in the team he has been a fan of since childhood,
Liverpool
.
His characteristics of aerial play, physicality, power and goal fit with the British style and Celta already received interest from English clubs last summer.
In Vigo they refer to the clause, which is around
40 million
.
Today, in Chamartín, a new opportunity for Xurxo.