Haaland ended his jinx against Salah

They are the great absentees at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and not seeing them in action in an official match for more than a month is very strange. Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah have ‘re-emerged’ today and nothing less than a classic style between Manchester City and Liverpool is at stake in the round of 16 tie for the Carabao Cup, the English League Cup. And as usual they did not disappoint.

Haaland barely needed ten minutes to open the scoring by successfully finishing the ball past Kevin De Bruyne, who is back in his own right at City after his disappointing World Cup with Belgium, who were eliminated in the group stage. He also assisted in the final 3-2, the work of Nathan Aké.

It was Haaland’s 24th goal of the season in his 19 games since signing for City last summer. The Norwegian maintained his impressive efficiency and, although he had the occasional occasion, he suffered from inactivity and ended up being substituted.

Salah wasn’t at his best either but he scored the goal that made it 2-2 for a moment after pushing a golden ball into the net that Darwin Núñez left him with a deadly counter.

Salah has scored for City in three competitions this season

The Egyptian has 15 goals in 22 games with Liverpool, but he has more than confirmed himself as City’s black beast by beating him this season in three competitions. He did so in July in the game that opened the course, the Community Shield, and the ‘reds’ won 3-1. Salah also scored in October and decided the Premier League classic at Anfield (1-0).

This time his success did not help Salah to give Liverpool the victory since City ended a streak of three consecutive defeats against Jürgen Klopp’s team because, of the two mentioned, it was already added in April in the semifinal of the FA Cup at Wembley (2-3).

Haaland and Salah were tied in their particular goalcoring duel but the Norwegian finally managed to beat the Egyptian, who has always beaten him in the four encounters between the two so far.

Salah scores but this time he wins and Haaland scores

Salah took the measure of Haaland. Four games, four wins and always scored at least one goal for nothing in Norwegian.

In the 2019-2020 Champions League, Liverpool won in Salzburg in both group games, in which an almost 19-year-old Haaland appeared. At Anfield, 4-2 with a double from the Egyptian and in Austria, 0-2 with one from the forward ‘red’.

Since Haaland is already a ‘citizen’, this season Salah, as said, also won and scored in Liverpool-City, in the Community Shield (3-1) and in the Premier (1-0). Today, in the first great game of English football after the World Cup, the sentence is broken, but mainly the same cracks are back.