Erling Haaland, the Leeds-born Norwegian who rewrote goalscoring records wherever he went
At five he reportedly set an age-group world record in the standing long jump. At 19 he scored nine goals in a single match at a youth World Cup. By his first season in Manchester he had struck 52 times in all competitions, more than any Premier League player had ever managed in one campaign.
Haaland was born on 21 July 2000 in Leeds, where his father Alf-Inge was playing for Leeds United, so he grew up supporting that club. His mother Gry Marita Braut was a Norwegian heptathlon champion in the 1990s. At three he moved to Bryne, his parents' hometown, and tried handball, golf and athletics as well as football, joining the local academy at five.
Handed a start for Bryne in the second tier before he turned 16, he drew a trial from Hoffenheim but joined Molde under Ole Gunnar Solskjær in February 2017. In July 2018 he scored four in the first 21 minutes against league leaders Brann. Red Bull Salzburg signed him for January 2019, and on his Champions League debut he hit a first-half hat-trick against Genk, the only player to do so on competition debut. No teenager before him had found the net in each of his opening four games in the tournament, and he left Salzburg with 29 goals, 28 of them in just 22 games that season.
Borussia Dortmund paid around €20 million, and he came off the bench on his debut at Augsburg to score a hat-trick within 23 minutes. He became the first Bundesliga player to score five in his opening two matches, taking only 56 minutes. He won the German Cup in 2021.
Manchester City bought him in 2022 for €60 million, and in his first season City won the treble, only the second English club to do so, while he topped the scoring charts in the league, FA Cup and Champions League and set a Premier League season record of 36. Individual prizes include PFA Players' Player of the Year and UEFA Men's Player of the Year, and he is the quickest in Premier League history to eight hat-tricks. For Norway he reached 50 goals in only 46 appearances, becoming the country's record scorer, and his seven goals at the 2026 World Cup helped take the team to the quarter-finals, its best ever showing.
Source: Erling Haaland
