My FPL team has Kane, Haaland and Jesus (sorry) up front!
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My FPL team has Kane, Haaland and Jesus (sorry) up front!
Because more than half of the posters here act like spoiled brats behind key boards and not ashamed to just shit here. And Halland had been the one City had in mind when they played with Kane insulted Spurs by spending on Grealish?
shame mbappe is staying at psg would love the 3 best strikers in the world in the prem, wonder who mbappe would go too if he ever came here
how can you afford a decent midfield with 23points going for just Kane and Haaland?
I got rid of Salah.
My midfield is currently...Luis Diaz, Pascal Groß, Gundogan, Bernardo (Andreas on the bench)
United at the moment to demonstrate the young and old standards in selfishness with Ronaldo
He seems to have an affinity for Liverpool, so them probably. They could fleece Real Madrid for an aging Salah at the same time
He’s hardly gonna come to spurs so why on earth would you want a rival getting him? Such a strange statement
He wouldn't take long to create a toxic atmosphere. Besides, I can only see him joining Real M. should he leave PSG - unless Man City decided to pay him £1m++ a week and a ransom in transfer fees and signing-on fees.
'He’s not going to try that, is he?': How Molde's chief scout knew Haaland was special
It probably won’t make Manchester United’s supporters feel any better to learn that the Norwegian cyborg otherwise known as Erling Haaland could have been their player long before he joined the team from the other side of a divided football city. “I remember one day when I was watching...
theathletic.com
How Man Utd, Liverpool and Woolwich missed out on Erling Haaland
Daniel Taylor
Sep 14, 2022
It probably won’t make Manchester United’s supporters feel any better to learn that the Norwegian cyborg otherwise known as Erling Haaland could have been their player long before he joined the team from the other side of a divided football city.
“I remember one day when I was watching Erling train,” says John Vik, formerly Molde’s chief scout. “He had been with us seven or eight months, he was training really hard and he had become part of the squad. I walked down to see Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who was Molde’s manager, and I said, ‘You have to call Manchester United, mate – this is unreal what we are looking at.’
“Me and Ole understood that this kid was so good we were not going to be able to keep him.
“Ole agreed with absolutely everything. ‘I will put a phone call in’, he said, ‘they need to hear about this kid’. We had friends at United. I used to work closely with United, in the early 2000s, and most of the guys I knew had gone. But Ole was Ole. ‘For God’s sake’, I said, ‘call Nicky Butt (then United’s head of academy), or call somebody, because this kid is unreal’.
“This was even before Erling had really started to play for Molde properly. Ole put the phone call in. So the name was put in. Then, how or whether United followed it up, I don’t know.”
Vik is the New York-born talent-spotter who brought Haaland to Molde as part of the chain of events that now sees the striker wearing the colours of Manchester City, with 12 goals in his first seven appearances.
Not that it was just United who passed up the opportunity to sign the player who now carries the hopes of Pep Guardiola’s team. Liverpool, Woolwich and various other Premier League clubs all toyed with the idea, according to Vik. But too many seemed to misjudge, or underestimate, what was in front of their eyes.
“I think they (the English scouts) looked at him as a target man because he was so big,” says Vik. “I kept telling them, ‘He’s not a target man – if you’re going to judge him that way, you’re going to be disappointed’.
“I remember one occasion when the team were out in Spain. I was with some of my colleagues from Premier League clubs and I remember saying, ‘I have to repeat myself, guys, don’t judge him as a target man, you have to look beyond that. He runs in between, he chases space, he’s fantastic in the box, he’s that kind of player’.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘Am I the guy who is getting it wrong? Am I seeing this the wrong way?
“But there has always been this perception with some English clubs that a striker needs to look a certain way, and that a centre-half needs to look a certain way, and you need a certain frame for a certain role. When they were seeing a big striker like Erling, they were seeing a target man and I think they forgot to look at what else he could do.
“Liverpool could have got him. Woolwich could have got him. Everyone was there to watch him but these clubs were seeing a No 9 who was tall and broad and, ‘Oh, he’s going to be a target man’. I couldn’t for the life of me see why they had narrowed him down that way.
“I didn’t like him with his back towards the goal and, at the time, he couldn’t really head the ball. I liked it when he turned round, when he chased into pockets, when he ran between the lines, his movement in the box. He didn’t want to hold the ball up, he just wanted to turn and go. There will be a lot of clubs kicking themselves because we can all see now what he is good at.”
It is some story how Haaland came to Molde’s attention and the spectacular piece of magic that confirmed Vik’s belief that the boy was special.
The scene was the Brumunddal stadium in Innlandet county, Norway. It was September 2015 and the best under-15s from Norway and Sweden were locked in battle.
Vik had already heard about Haaland’s goalscoring exploits for his hometown club in Bryne, in the south west of the country. Vik was at the game to see whether the same player could stand out in a Swede-Norse youth international. And one moment, in particular, brought him to his feet.
“I can’t say I remember much about the game,” he says. “I can’t remember the score and I can’t remember the first half. But then we got to the second half, the kick-off, and that was the moment I will always remember.
“I could see Erling talking to the player beside him. Sweden’s goalkeeper was at the edge of his penalty box, stretching, preparing for the second half. I thought, ‘No, no, no, no effing way! He’s not going to try that, is he?’ And then he did it. Erling chipped the goalkeeper and put the ball straight into the goal.“
Even now, you can hear the excitement in Vik’s voice and the unmistakable sense that he is reminiscing about a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.
“It wasn’t the technique that impressed me the most, it was the fact he had the balls to do it. It was a big occasion. Many of these Norwegian kids were spread all over the country, dominating games in their small leagues or small villages. It was the first time these kids had played with the national flag on their chests. There were families in the stand. There were scouts from all over.
“Sometimes, in that position, players will hide. Most of the players that day were playing safe, square passes, not doing anything extra. But there was this kid with the mentality to chip the goalkeeper straight from the kick-off.
“In my report afterwards, it was all about his mentality. In Norway, everyone has more or less the same personality. If you aren’t like that, you’re looked upon as crazy. But this guy doesn’t care. He’s just being himself.”
Haaland was part of Bryne FK’s junior system at the time and, at the age of 14, he was already training with their under-19s. His first-team debut came at 15. It was clear he should be playing at a higher level. His transfer to Molde went through in February 2017 and, over the next year or so, there was the growth spurt that makes him such a formidable size for opponents.
“If you look at pictures of him when he’s 12 or 13, he’s very small,” says Vik. “The way he looks today, I couldn’t see that day. But he started to grow from the day we got him.
“In his first year, he gained 10 to 12 centimetres and put on eight to 10 kilos of muscle. If you remember a young Zlatan Ibrahimovic scoring that dribble goal (for Ajax) at the start of his career, he was so light and lean. With Erling, it was different. He got strong at the same time he got tall.
“The kid was unstoppable. We had to take it easy with him in the first six months. He had been playing so much, we had to be careful. I remember seeing him one day when he was watching training from the side and I asked him, ‘What’s the problem?’. He looked at me: ‘I have absolutely no problem’. Then he pointed at the medical staff: ‘They have the problem’. He just wanted to train every day and play every game.”
Vik has just left his role at Molde, which he has held for the past 11 years, because he is moving to Tampa, Florida, where he intends to operate on a freelance basis (Molde will be among his clients), looking for the best American talent.
He pays tribute to the way Alfie Haaland, once a midfielder for Manchester City, Leeds United and Nottingham Forest, has guided his son’s career.
But Vik is probably also entitled to reflect on it as a personal success given the number of clubs who failed to see Haaland’s star potential.
Aged 15, Haaland was invited to a week-long trial at Hoffenheim but came away from the Bundesliga club without a deal being closed. It was a similar story with FC Copenhagen, then the champions of Denmark and managed by Stale Solbakken – now, ironically, Haaland’s coach for the Norway national team.
“It doesn’t mean they were blind, but I had seen Erling playing in games, not just in training,” says Vik. “I knew he affected games, not just with his football but his personality.
“I knew he would be great for Molde in many ways, but I also knew he would be a great transfer. That’s how we worked. We found them, we developed them and then we knew we had to sell them. We always knew we were just a small stepping stone on the path to a bigger career.
“I said to Molde, ‘He will play for us, he will be great for us and we will make good money when we sell him’. I pushed it really hard and, on the day it went through, I said to myself, ‘You can relax now, open a cold beer from the fridge’. That was a good feeling. I can’t say I knew he would be top 10 in the world, but I knew the kid was special.”
Haaland will be trying to make that exact point when City take on Borussia Dortmund, his former club, in the Champions League on Wednesday.
Vik was there on the day Haaland, aged 17, scored four for Molde in an away game at SK Brann. At 19, the striker scored nine against Honduras in the Under-20s’ World Cup. For Dortmund, there were 86 goals in 89 appearances. Now 22, Haaland has already rattled in two hat-tricks during his first month in the Premier League.
“I get the feeling he’s exactly the same kid as always,” says Vik. “I like that about him. He scores two or three goals and he repeats the performance the next week. He just keeps going. He loves to play, loves to score goals. He just goes to bed and wakes up the next day, exactly the same. And he is reaching levels
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People say he only does tap-ins... 
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Braut is a bit of a shit middle name isn't it?
That's about the only critical thing i can say about him. He's the definition of a generational talent.
That's about the only critical thing i can say about him. He's the definition of a generational talent.
Everton could have signed him but declined when ex DOF Steve Walsh ( the guy who found Vardy, Mahrez and Kante) brought over Haaland to Everton for a week in 2017. But the the board said no because they they thought the teenager was to tall! 
Braut is his second surname - not a middle name
Every time this thread gets bumped, it feels like Haaland's goalscoring is in another dimension somewhere.
Fucking terrified of facing him and realising he's not CGI.
Fucking terrified of facing him and realising he's not CGI.
