During the FIFA World Cup in 2022, when the rest of the world focused on the best in the business plying their wares in Qatar, Sky Sports and Manchester City posted a comedy-style video featuring Erling Haaland. In it, the striker walks around the City training ground looking a little lost himself. Out of boredom, he drives a lawnmower. He tries to call teammates only to go to voicemail. He puts a longing hand on the shoulder of a freekick mannequin wearing a Kevin De Bruyne jersey.
“I’m working hard while the girls are away. Sometimes, it’s a bit boring,” he says in the clip as melancholy violin music plays. “But time flies. I’m missing all the hype. I’m not going to lie. Celebrating a goal alone… it’s not the same.”
For the past month, Haaland has not celebrated his goals alone.
Four years after that clip, Haaland was at the World Cup himself. At home in Norway, a nation of 5.6 million people cheered for each of his seven goals at the World Cup. So was the neutral support base left without a horse at the World Cup.
Norway crashed out of the FIFA World Cup at the hands of England in the quarter-finals on Saturday, but Haaland had become one of the most beloved footballers on the internet. During Norway’s six games in the U.S., he has become a social media darling for his ferocious ability to score goals on the pitch at will and his clumsy moves that don’t exactly match his image as a predatory, man-mountain playing Viking football who overpowers others on the pitch.
Norway’s Erling Haaland leaves the pitch halfway during the World Cup quarter-final football match between Norway and England at Miami Gardens. (AP Photo)
Watch the clip of him scoring the first of two goals against Brazil. He’s lumbering to look unruffled, his head slightly forward of the rest of his 6-foot, 5-inch frame, as his teammates play on the left side. Then, out of nowhere, he turns on, runs into the middle and rises to meet the ball with his head. For his second goal, he shot the ball between Brazilian legs with precision to give Norway an unassailable 2-0 lead. While the rest of his countrymen lose their minds, he walks away laughing as if it were a training ground game.
Also read | The Making of Haaland: How a Little Boy Became Football’s Ultimate Predator
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Former Norwegian national team star Morten Gamst Pedersen recently told The Indian Express: “Erling is a superstar, who scores goals for fun and then laughs about it. But he’s also a humble guy, like the rest of the team.”
Chinese social media took to the goalscorer’s eccentricities and applauded his eccentricities, though he scored goals, dressing the success lightly. Everything from his 6000 KCal diet to how he folds the training bibs before handing them off (and not chucking them to the support staff) was made into something a role model could offer.
After those two goals against Brazil, the internet wanted more. More Haaland. More of his goofy off-field personality. And of course more of those weird moves. Because here was a guy who could do fantastic things with the ball and still somehow be relevant. So they pulled out an old clip of him doing an exaggerated walk during a Manchester City game, his head so far ahead of his body that it became an instant meme. Social media influencers from South America to Russia have since copied the walk, garnering millions of views. Someone has recreated Haaland’s walk with a spring onion, the onion’s wiry roots playing off his blond locks. Someone else posted a photo of Haaland’s face on an overturned mop, then his face on an elevator door with his neck outstretched every time the door closes.
Also read | How Norway went from a ‘closer’ team to the quarter-finals of the FIFA World Cup
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Any other footballer and their social media team would have been mocked. Holland embraced. With his endearing sense of humor, he likes to roast himself.
When someone posted an AI-generated clip of Vinicius Junior and him in a scene from Hollywood comedy White Chicks, Haaland publicly suggested the Brazilian should recreate it. “Where are your eyebrows?” He also posts photos of his face with rude comments from fans like this one. or “You look like an alien.”
Thanks to his posts on Snapchat, Erling Haaland is a social media phenomenon.
In an era where players’ internet personas are carefully crafted and their social media feeds are manicured to make the player look brand-perfect, Haaland has parlayed Snapchat’s virality over the years with a brand of self-deprecating humor that would put the world’s best memes to shame. In one of them, he posted a selfie of Shrek’s shoulder with the caption, “A little busy… selfie with my twins.” Then there’s another photo where he’s using a Snapchat filter of himself and has his hair shaved with the caption: “Can go bald.”
Thanks to his posts on Snapchat, Erling Haaland is a social media phenomenon.
He also extended the reach of an old video of him as a young man in a rap song called Kygo Joe, where his pseudonym gender is revealed.
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As the thousands of Norwegians who traveled to the U.S. for the World Cup spent the past month exploring the country and all it has to offer, Haaland seems to have done the same, posting videos of himself sampling burgers in a car, then visiting clothing stores where he posed with a T-shirt that read: “Y’all Can Kiss My Dallas.”
Also read | How Norway football fans turned to their Viking history for the FIFA World Cup
After Norway’s exit from the World Cup, he stood in front of the media praising his one-time teammate Jude Bellingham. He had to point out that despite Bellingham’s two goals being the reason for their exit, Bellingham was heavily criticized by the media in England.
Then he came to the topic of the summer that ended in the US.
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“In the end I’m just proud. Every day here is so proud. I don’t know what to say anymore, I’ve talked too much here. And I’m getting a little sick of it. It’s time to take a break,” he said with a smile.