ERLING HAALAND will have hoards of copycat Premier League players chugging raw milk to try to match his Manchester City heroics.
The striker offered a behind-the-scenes look at his life and it turns out all you need to be one of the greatest strikers ever is raw milk and tomahawk steaks.
That’s a load of rubbish, of course. If it works for him, then good for him.
But the man is a goalscoring monster and whether he knocks back raw milk or a strawberry milkshake, it will make little difference.
People like me aren’t going to be queuing up for it at our local farm shop — but his rivals will.
Footballers are mostly copycats. Remember when Gareth Bale took to wearing Kinesio tape week in, week out.
He scored with a bicycle-kick for Real Madrid against Liverpool in the Champions League final in 2018 and everyone ran out to buy the same stuff?
When Bale was taping up both hamstrings, his calf, his elbow, his left shin, everyone was like ‘Oh, I’ll do that as well because it must be the reason why he’s playing well’.
Now, no one wears that tape. But they do all seem to think cutting holes in the back of your socks is a route to glory.
If one player does something different and has some success, everyone will do it.
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It’s b*******. And managers are no different.
Because Pep Guardiola has a towering Scandinavian striker leading the line, Arsenal and Liverpool have gone and got the same thing.
But neither of them have one quite like Haaland.
If he was a stock, we would all be having a go. He’s the Tesla or Amazon of football.
Haaland has 98 Prem goals in 107 games, which is incredible. The question is not whether he will hit 100 — it’s in which half he will do it against Liverpool tomorrow.
Whether he will break Alan Shearer’s Prem record of 260 goals isn’t even a question any more.
If he sees out his mammoth contract, he won’t just break it he will obliterate it and take the tally up past 500.
As good as Harry Kane and Mo Salah are, they never had seasons like this.
Even a confident defender like Virgil van Dijk, standing in the tunnel tomorrow, is going to look left and have second thoughts.
I remember my first season in the Prem, playing Chelsea and looking across to John Terry and Petr Cech.
People like me aren’t going to be queuing up for it at our local farm shop — but his rivals will.”
Troy Deeney
Not only did I have to look left, but look left and up, thinking, ‘F*** me, he’s big . . . f*** me, he’s even bigger.’
Van Dijk is one of the world’s best central defenders. But he will have seen Haaland tearing past Arsenal’s William Saliba and Gabriel — the best pairing in the league — and has to be worried.
Liverpool’s defenders will have it in the back of their minds that, with the form he is in, it will only take one small mistake to be brutally punished by City’s blond beast.
What is most impressive about the big Norwegian this season — aside from the fact he scores about 32 goals a week — is that he has become an even more rounded player.
After being criticised by some for a ‘quiet’ season last year (he still scored 22, ridiculous) he has come back a real leader.
His hold up play has come a long way and he is now part of Guardola’s leadership group at City — and he is still scoring bucketloads.
It is frightening to see the player he has become. However well Manchester City do this season, it will be down to Haaland.
Virgil stand-off right Way
Virgil van Dijk faced up to Wayne Rooney this week after the two exchanged blows in the media. And I absolutely loved it.
Van Dijk had already hit back at Rooney taking issue with his body language, calling it “lazy criticism”.
After Liverpool’s Champions League victory against Real Madrid, the Reds captain went live on air with Rooney and had another go.
You’ve got to be able to stand up for yourself and your club — and he did just that.
As pundits and as people that work in the media now, when you say something you’ve got to realise there’s somebody on the other side.
I don’t think Rooney was being malicious or vindictive and it’s a sign of respect from Virgil that he actually addressed it.
He could easily have said he didn’t want to do the interview because Wayne is there and just gone home.
But he said it to his face, like a man. For both of them, I loved it.
While it was uncomfortable and awkward for most people to watch, that’s an insight into what a dressing room is like.
The harsh realities and harsh truth.
That’s how it should be. We can all disagree, that’s the beauty of football.
