Erling Haaland never does the mixed zone — the post-match interview area where players can talk as much, or as little, as they like.
In fact, after Manchester City home games, he hardly ever even walks through it, let alone stops for a chat.
City have played 30 times at the Etihad Stadium this season and there are just two occasions that stand out.
Advertisement
The first time, after they beat Nottingham Forest 6-0 last August on the eve of transfer deadline day and he had scored a first-half hat-trick, journalists were already huddled around Bernardo Silva, who was explaining why a move had not materialised. Haaland glided through behind him while the rest of us were sucked in by Bernardo — almost as if Pep Guardiola designed it on the training ground.
Months then passed before the 22-year-old walked through a mixed zone again, and this time he was also with Bernardo. The diminutive Portuguese winger grabbed his much bigger team-mate and tried to push him towards us. “Hey, guys! Who wants to speak to Erling?” he joked.
And it was a joke, of course, because when City play on the road and there is no choice but to walk through the mixed zone on the way back to the team bus, and Haaland is within hailing distance, he does not even turn his head to acknowledge our interest. That is what happened this second time.
Footballers can do whatever they like with their time, not least because a lot of them have already done post-match TV interviews anyway, fielding the same sort of questions the written press would ask if they did stop in the mixed zone. They have families to see, lives to live and, in many cases, it seems that the less they say the easier those lives are.
GO DEEPER
You have one job: Stop Erling Haaland. How do you do it?
And Haaland does not say much at all. In fact, he came to England last summer with a reputation for being very dismissive if he did say something; there are YouTube compilations of his most awkward media interactions. Sometimes he looks happy while he gives a two-word response, sometimes he looks annoyed, but either way, he does not give much away.
Those grumpy interviews seem to be a thing of the past since he joined City and he has been slightly more forthcoming. He certainly does not come across as rude and often seems to be enjoying himself: in August he spoke openly to Alan Shearer for The Athletic, and during a live chat with Sky Sports last month, as City paraded the Premier League trophy, he broke away to chant and celebrate with fans.
And why not? He had just won his first league title in England. It would be much better to remember the adulation of the supporters than give another interview, surely?
But it does mean that, from a media point of view, he is a select breed: a huge name everybody wants to hear from but who does not say a lot. He’s like Lionel Messi, in that sense.
So there were mixed feelings when it was suggested that Haaland would be taking part in City’s official media day ahead of this weekend’s Champions League final.
Advertisement
At last, a chance to grill the goal machine!
Grateful, absolutely. But what do we possibly ask him to get a good response? And will he actually do it? There were added difficulty multipliers, too. A five-minute time limit and the spectacle of 30 journalists shouting over each other, peppering the subject with random questions.
The day had run without a hitch: Kyle Walker, Ederson, Kevin De Bruyne and John Stones had come over to do their five minutes and all in good time, especially considering the number of other duties they had to attend do.
GO DEEPER
Walker: Man City to 'right the wrongs' of Chelsea Champions League loss
Then there was a bit of a wait.
Then the wait got a bit longer.
Was Haaland even in the building? It had not got to the stage where you would ask if the food was on its way if a restaurant was taking its time with your order, but because Haaland is so reluctant to do these things, it became a bit of a worry.
Especially when Nathan Ake and Ruben Dias came in first — those are known for spending hours in the gym after training.
“Fifteen, 20 minutes (more),” one of City’s press team reassured us. All good.
Around 10 minutes later, he arrived, having his pictures taken for official shots and then speaking to TV2, a station from his Norwegian homeland, who used to see a lot of him, but not much any more. Three minutes up until this point, in fact. Seven after this.
When Haaland was done with everything else, he strode over. And it was a stride. This was happening on a full-sized indoor pitch at City’s training ground, and he marched across it with the swagger of a main protagonist in Grand Theft Auto.
“Hello, everyone,” he bellowed.
There was a huddle of radio reporters to address before he got to us in the written section, the two main broadcasters in the UK doing a deal so that both audiences could hear from him.
Our pen was packed: the metal gates allowed five journalists — or six normal people — to stand shoulder to shoulder. Four of us had bagged the front row a couple of hours earlier — like fans turning up outside the venue at 7am on the day of a Beyonce gig. Everybody else packed in behind. One journalist had even pulled up a chair to stand on.
And then it started.
Haaland’s first two responses did not bode well.
Does the Ballon d’Or matter to him?
“I don’t think of this, I think of winning the next game,” he replied.
What do you think about Inter Milan, who stand between City and the treble? What are their strengths?
“I really don’t like to speak too much about my opponents…” He did elaborate slightly, but not a lot, and after 30 seconds we were already two questions in.
Advertisement
You’re probably thinking that those questions themselves are hardly firestarters, and that is a fair point. There was very little planning, shamefully. It was every man for himself.
A Norwegian reporter, who had also secured a front-row position, tried a couple of times to get a question in — but was drowned out. Haaland turned to him and joked, “A little louder.”
It was the reporter on the chair who won that particular battle, drowning out three or four others. Haaland has said a few times now that he was brought to City to help them win the Champions League — one of the most insightful things he has offered this season — so he was asked, from on high, whether that brought any pressure just a few days out from its final.
“Of course, I feel pressure,” he said, which should not have come as a surprise but did a little bit, considering he is revered as a footballing machine, despite his young age. “I would lie if I said I didn’t. You say it yourself and it’s true: they won the Premier League without me, they won every trophy without me. So I’m here to try to do a thing that the club has never done before, and I’ll do my best.”
The Norwegian reporter then got his chance and asked about the criticism Haaland had faced earlier in the season, when it was suggested he was not a good fit for City, despite having scored 26 goals in 20 games at that point.
“I think often it’s a good thing when people start criticising you,” he said. “I scored every single game and then people started criticising me. That’s what happened, basically. When people criticise you it’s normally a good thing it’s just about trying to smile a bit and enjoy life.” (He didn’t actually score in every game.)
He was asked about winning trophies at City, and pointed out how close they had been to a treble in the recent past — reaching the FA Cup and Champions League semi-finals while winning the title last season, and the Champions League one and FA Cup semis to go with topping the Premier League (and lifting the Carabao Cup) in 2020-21 — and finished with, “I don’t know what more to say.”
Advertisement
A bit more on criticism came next.
Haaland missed a couple of chances in the Community Shield defeat to Liverpool on his official City debut in July and, after that, articles were written suggesting it may take him time to settle following his transfer from Germany’s Borussia Dortmund, while some more crude social-media accounts made unfavourable comparisons with Darwin Nunez, Liverpool’s new striker, who did score that day.
When asked about that, he ended up making a joke, completely out of the blue, about his good friend Jack Grealish, who only started to show his best form for City in his second season after joining from Aston Villa in the summer of 2021.
“I told Jack, sometimes players need maybe a year or something to come into the new league and new team and everything, and sometimes players come directly in and perform… I told him this.” That earned a laugh.
GO DEEPER
Everybody wanted more: How Jack Grealish lived up to his £100m price tag
“So, yeah, that was one game. Community Shield. I missed a couple of big chances. It can happen, it will happen again. What can you do? Nothing. You have to focus on the next thing, the next game, and that’s what I did. I scored two goals in the next game (the Premier League opener against West Ham), so it was still not a bad start.”
Does he listen to criticism?
“No,” he says, “but I’m not stupid. I get things with me, of course. I don’t read anything because I think my brain would be a bit crazy if I was reading everything everyone is writing. So I cannot do that, but I get things with me, and then it was even better to score two goals in the next game.”
A couple of questions later, Haaland was asked if he had set himself a goal target for this season and, if so… well, we did not get to find out what the ‘if so’ bit was because he already gave a firm, “No”.
A member of City staff indicated the next question would be the final one, and it was about whether Haaland would eat his father’s homemade lasagne the night before the game, which had become a tradition throughout the season.
Advertisement
He did not hear the first time and leaned in with a big, “Eh?!”, then added: “No, I think I’m going to travel to Istanbul in a couple of days, so he will not be there cooking for me, sorry.”
Fortunately, he stayed for a couple more questions, which gave a brief insight into his mindset at the end of a season in which he has scored 52 goals, breaking all sorts of records, including the most scored in a single Premier League campaign. His first in the competition, of course, at 22.
Did he expect to be so prolific right away?
“No, I didn’t expect to score this many goals but, again, I could have scored more. I’ve been missing a lot of chances, so I could have scored more. That’s the truth.”
It should be no surprise that he wants more and more goals, as that is what we have become accustomed to seeing from him in a City shirt, but it is interesting that he gets even a smidgen down on himself, considering he literally laughs off missed chances on the pitch sometimes.
So, how does he feel going into the Champions League final on a run of just one goal in his last seven games — not just his most barren spell at City but for any of his clubs since he was a kid back home at Molde?
“You can think of it as one goal in seven games or 52 goals in 52 games… and eight assists, I think,” the addition of the assists was very funny — deadpan in its delivery.
“So you can think of it in both ways.”
Which way is he thinking of it?
“I’m not stressed. I feel really good.”
See you in Turkey, Erling. Maybe.
GO DEEPER
Which seven clubs have won the European treble before?
(Top photo: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)