Haaland meets history

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The Norwegian continues to devour records and after just eight games, he already has 14 goals in the Premier League

Erling Braut Haaland is the player of the moment on planet football. The Norwegian striker exceeds all expectations after his signing with Manchester City and does not stop collecting goals. The final showing, that of his third consecutive hat-trick at the Etihad Stadium, saw him crush United in the derby and widen an already insulting gap in the top goalscorer list. The former Borussia Dortmund player has scored 14 goals in just eight games, figures more typical of a ‘cyborg’ than a player of flesh and blood.

“The difference is that Erling may need all his teammates, while Messi made it on his own,” Pep Guardiola said on Sunday, after watching a cyclone devastate Manchester United from the sidelines. Haaland needs the Fodens, De Bruyne, Grealish, Gundogan and company, but he has managed to fit perfectly into an orchestra that seemed perfect and improve them all. No one better than the Norwegian to take advantage of the back balls that are so typical of Santpedor’s plan and no one better than him to read the precise passes De Bruyne throws into space.

Against United again, as Pep says, he needed his team-mates, but he took advantage of all of them to make a hat-trick that has almost become routine for him. It is the third time in a row that he has played at home, after what he did against Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest. No one in the history of English football had ever achieved a feat of this dimension and Haaland has achieved it after playing just four games at an Etihad Stadium rubbing his eyes with the astronomical numbers of his new signing.

And it’s that Haaland is the piece Guardiola missed to make a dream team. The Norwegian started out as an island, deadly in front of goal, yes, in the Manchester City game, but as the games went on, his adjustment was total. Against United, he cleared the space for Foden to open the can and dropped the hook several times to the point of racking up two new assists for the ‘sky blue’ youth side for a total of three he already has in the Premier League.

With 14 goals in just eight games, seven more than Kane and eight more than Mitrovic, Haaland now faces all the records broken in the Premier League. The top scorers in a season since the grading was changed in 1992 were Andy Cole, who scored 34 in the 1993-1994 season, and Alan Shearer, who repeated the same figure a year later. The gluttony of City’s new ‘9’ even leads him to resist the average of a practically insurmountable figure, that of Bill ‘Dixie’ Dean with Everton in the 1927-28 season. The one from Birkenhead scored 60 goals, a figure that Haaland could exceed in the unlikely event that he continued with the same scoring pace as he finished the course with 66 goals in the competition.

Haaland’s speed makes him compare to players who have marked the beautiful game over the past decade. It took Cristiano Ronaldo 232 games to score three hat-tricks in the Premier League, figures that reflect the dimension of what City’s new star is doing. The Portuguese added in 22 years that the former Dortmund player has only scored 50 goals, while Messi had 44. Haaland’s gluttony quadruples those records. The Norwegian has already scored 173 goals in his career between Molde, Red Bull Salzburg, Borussia Dortmund, Manchester City and the Norwegian team. A ‘cyborg’ is at large and ready to go down in the history of world football.

Source: La Verdad

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