Haaland’s excellence in football must come from repetition – 06/05/2023 – O Mundo É uma Bola

“You can have an exceptional year, but can you repeat it, repeat it again, repeat it again? It looks like he can, but until he does it’s hard to put him in that category of great strikers.”

The author of this sentence is Rio Ferdinand, one of the great defenders of English football, star of Manchester United, a club he defended from 2002 to 2014, winning 13 titles.

Ferdinand, who was at the 2002 (Korea/Japan) and 2006 (Germany) World Cups and hung up his boots in 2015, commented (he is a television commentator for BT Sport) about Erling Haaland, 22, the Norwegian from Manchester City who He is currently the best striker in the world.

The blond and big Haaland, 1.94 m, not today, has been playing too much. After passing through Molde (Norway), Salzburg (Austria) and Borussia Dortmund (Germany), for which he was the top scorer in the Champions League, in 2020/21, he defends Manchester City.

The team coached by Spaniard Pep Guardiola leads the English Championship, is in the semifinals of the Champions League (it will duel with Real Madrid) and in the decision of the FA Cup (the rival will be Man United).

In his first season in England, Haaland has been fantastic. He scored 35 goals in 31 matches (more than one per game) and broke the Premier League record (as the English have been called since 1992), belonging to Andy Cole (34 goals in 1993/1994 for Newcastle) and Alan Shearer (the same 34 for Blackburn in 1994/1995).

The Norwegian still has five more games to play (I write before this Saturday, against Leeds) and can expand that number. However, it will not reach the historic record of the English Championship, set in 1927/28 by Dixie Dean, from Everton: 60 goals in 39 matches.

Haaland is also the top scorer of the 2022/23 Champions League, with 12 goals in eight games, five of them in the 7-0 against German Leipzig in the return match of the round of 16, in Manchester. A gala performance, which could have been even more fabulous if Guardiola had not substituted him in the 18th minute of the second half.

The number 9 is a prodigy due to the speed with which he reaches marks. In the Champions League, no one reached 30 goals so quickly – it took 25 games. There are already 35 goals (in 27 games), an average of 1.3 per game. Stupendous.

Still a “child”, adept at electronic entertainment, Haaland tries not to be seduced by the increasingly imminent stardom.

“I can’t go on thinking about those records or I’m going to go crazy. I’m going home to play video games!” ) that covered up goalkeeper Fabianski.

The records and goals put Haaland, deservedly, at the top of the list of strikers in this second decade of the 21st century. He even surpasses the famous Frenchman Mbappé, runner-up in the World Cup in Qatar and top scorer in the French Championship with “only” 23 goals in 29 games.

The Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo, 38, who is nearing the end of his career in the obscure football of Saudi Arabia, is a historic scorer in the Champions League, with 140 goals in 183 games, an average of 0.77.

Haaland’s path to reach CR7, the main European interclub, is a long one, but at the current pace, the possibility is real. And it is very important to record this: “at the current pace”.

Will Haaland continue at a very high level? This is the pertinent question asked by Ferdinand, who, when citing the best forwards he faced, listed Ronaldo Fenômeno, Lionel Messi, Dutchman Dennis Bergkamp and Spaniard Raúl González.

Back then, when Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi, for example, emerged (and even Pelé, Garrincha, Maradona, Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Zidane…), who could attest that they would be the main football stars for a long sequence of years, monopolizing the world’s best awards for a decade and a half?

It was possible to predict, to bet, as there were predictions and bets in relation to dozens of others who were shipwrecked along the way, but only one element would have (and continues to have) the ability to give an undoubted answer to any player: time.

Haaland has been spectacular, but only the maintenance of his performance, year after year, winning titles (and individual awards) and approaching the numbers (or surpassing them) of the great scorers of today and yesterday, will be able to place him him permanently in the gallery of the greatest strikers in the history of football.

The excellence, the glory, the distinction of the young Norwegian will only come in this way: through repetition. If Haaland will get there, he, time, also known as “the lord of reason”, will be the one to say.

Depending on the striker’s will, who doesn’t intend to curb the scoring rage, that same time will prove him right one day.

This is what can be deduced from the text that Haaland posted on the social network, possibly after having enjoyed himself in the video game. “Thirty-five Premier League goals. Thank you all so much for your support, nothing happens without you. We don’t stop there!”