[Sport] Erling Braut Haaland: The making of football's 'humble' superstar

[Dewey]

Alfe Ingve Berntsen remembers the first time he laid eyes on this scrawny kid with an appetite for goals.

It was 2005 and Berntsen was coaching the youth teams at Norwegian club Bryne FK when a five-year-old Erling Haaland first walked through the door.
"We saw immediately he was something special," Berntsen recalls.
These days, scrawny isn't a word you'd typically associate with Borussia Dortmund striker Haaland. He stands at 6 feet 4 inches, weighs close to 14 stone and has transformed himself into something resembling Norse god Thor.
After making his Champions League debut in 2019, it took Haaland just seven games to score 10 goals - the fastest any player has reached double figures in the competition’s history. He’s also the first teenager to score 10 goals in a single Champions League season.
At just 20 years of age, Haalaand is unquestionably one of the best strikers in the world.
“Erling was the best when he was a little guy, but we didn’t think when I started to coach him when he was seven that he would become top scorer in the Champions League when he was 19,” Berntsen says.
"It was soon quite obvious that he would be a very, very good player, but these thoughts, I think, came when he was 11 or 12 - then the talent developed from good to very, very good."

'Loveable. Funny. Serious. '
Given his size, speed and strength, it’s often remarked about Haaland that he may well have been created in a lab.
Since erupting onto the Champions League scene as a 19-year-old with RB Salzburg, there have been very few defenders - if any - that have been able to cope with the Norwegian striker’s physical attributes.
Tall, broad-shouldered and muscular, Haaland boasts blistering speed, which is all the more impressive for someone his size. On the pitch, he is an imposing brute of a forward, but more often than not plays football with a broad grin on his face. Despite his physicality, his finishing also often display a feather light touch.
According to Bernsten, Haaland is much the same person that arrived Bryne FK, his hometown club, as an excitable kid, better known then for being the son of former Premier League player Alf-Inge Haaland, who also played for Norway.
"He's lovable guy," Berntsen says of the 20-year-old Haaland. "He is humble. He trained a lot. He is funny and he's serious. He's very similar now to how he was when he was 11 and 12. He scores a lot and he smiles a lot. So he hasn't really changed.
"He was always up front. If you've seen clips [of him] from a young age, he still has a very similar playing style.
"He is still this same funny, goalscoring, serious guy. He's really good in training, takes care of his body. The restitution, the sleep habits, nutrition, he is a top individual athlete - very professional."

Smartness in the box
To focus solely on his physical attributes, however, would do a disservice to the work Haaland has put in to become one of the most intelligent forwards in Europe. He often appears in the right place at the right time, but this is by design rather than luck.
As a child, Haaland was certainly a talented footballer but by no means a prodigy. He was average height and skinny, Berntsen recalls, and certainly wasn't able to lean on his physicality like he is today.
Despite his size - or lack of, rather - Haaland's ability meant he was often given the opportunity to train with an older age group - Berntsen's group - and it was here that he was forced to develop the attacking instincts he now displays with such consistency.
"When he was seven, he began to become part of our team - some days, not always - but some days because he was too good for his own age group," Berntsen recalls.
"When you are seven and play with eight-year olds, you're lacking the physicality. So from an early age, when he began to play with boys one year older, he had to develop smartness in the box. When you see him now, he’s strong and has a lot of power, but he didn’t have that before.
"When Erling trained with his own age group, they were good and when he became part of our [older] group, they were also very good players," Berntsen says, also remarking that Haaland was gifted in athletics and handball.