Erling Haaland is a victim of Manchester City’s overwhelming success in the 2022-23 season. The triplet of the team led by Guardiola triggered a reaction in their rivals. A compression of spaces unprecedented in the history of football. A retreat into the depths of the lower block towards which teams like Madrid, Bayern, Chelsea or United are moving, who due to their pedigree previously tried to demonstrate their desire for dominance and now when they face City they concentrate on protecting themselves. The trenches are getting deeper. Haaland suffers from it, who spends the games distancing himself in an impossible topography in search of passes that do not arrive. A loop of discouragement threatens to make him think that he is not capable of helping his team. His gestures express impatience.
Haaland went from scoring 29 goals from play in 35 games in the 2022-23 Premier League, an unprecedented frequency of one goal every 96 minutes excluding penalties, to scoring a goal every 128 minutes in this league season, excluding penalties. Today the Norwegian has 29 goals in 34 games in all competitions. His statistics are still great. But they are no longer the ratios that made him the most successful striker in history in a Premier season – 35 goals – nor the player who has scored the most goals in the fewest Champions League games – 41 goals in 37 games. Today his league records excluding penalties distance him from Harry Kane, the most conclusive striker in Europe (one goal every 82 minutes in the Bundesliga) and bring him closer to Sorloth and Vinicius (one goal every 128 minutes each in the unequal Spanish League). or Bellingham, scorer for Madrid, their next rival in the Champions League, who adds a goal every 125 minutes. Haaland moves in a new ecosystem. On the edge of anxiety.
“You can think of it in two ways,” says Haaland, when asked about the state of his ambition; “One is that I came here when I was 22 and I won everything. The other is that I’m 23 and I already know what it means to win everything. I have tasted it. That feeling makes you want to repeat it. “I want to win again.”
A bone injury in his foot kept him out for two months between November and January. In his last season in Dortmund, in the winter of 2021-22, he was absent for several months due to hip problems. His weight, around 90 kilos, and his basketball player’s stance, 194 centimeters tall, provide him with power and leverage to move on the field, while at the same time becoming a handicap. He needs more rest, more recovery time, and a longer taper than more compact players. “He arrived last season and his impact was incredible,” Guardiola recalled a week ago. “This season started very well but he has been injured for two months.”
Unhinged against Van Dijk, a week ago at Anfield he seemed so frustrated that at times he seemed to settle away from the passing chain. This Saturday in the Cup quarterfinals against Newcastle he alternated his fatigue between the defensive core of the rival area and the harassment of Schär and Botman every time he went down to midfield to offer his support in the origin of City’s plays. Two games without scoring a goal are too many when contrasted with the journey of the most decisive striker in the world last year.
The permissiveness of the referees, who do not always call a foul when they hit him – Schär stepped on his foot, one of his weak points – is a cause for alarm among the Norwegian media. “It’s always like this,” Guardiola reflected. “They call more fouls against him against central defenders than against central defenders against him. It is what it is. “We have known this for a long time.”
Guardiola’s challenge is to make him feel useful
But the biggest obstacle between Haaland and the goal is the redoubled defensive vocation of his rivals, prepared for City’s famous attack. “The technical secretariats of the big teams in Europe have invested a lot of resources and money in studying formulas to stop City,” says an advisor at the service of a Premier club who prefers anonymity. Where medium and large teams placed the line of defenders at the front of the area and defended themselves with another line of four midfielders, now they delay the center backs to the penalty spot and add a fifth man to the second line of contention. More alert men, better adjustments and with more continuity. Thanks to tactical and physical advances, coaches and players have specialized in pressing. The spaces have been compressed like never before in the history of football and the standard of maximum difficulty is represented by City and, at the apex of their advance, by their blonde number nine.
“I’m happy here,” Haaland repeats, “but in the future you never know.” Guardiola’s challenge is to devise functions that allow Haaland to take advantage of the speed of his thinking and the finesse of his left foot to escape the labyrinth without becoming denatured or losing his vocation to unmark and score. The challenge for Haaland, whose contract ends in 2027, is to adapt to living in the maximum difficulty of the minimum space.
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