Sporting News UK senior content producer Dom Farrell releases 'Glory Days for the Waifs and Strays: Identity and Meaning in the Rise of the Modern Manchester City' on October 21, 2025 via Biteback Publishing.
This second exclusive extract looks at Erling Haaland's arrival in Manchester and what City signing a global phenomenon meant for the Premier League and the striker's homeland.
BUY NOW: Glory Days for the Waifs and Strays: Identity and Meaning in the Rise of the Modern Manchester City
Erling Haaland stole in front of Joe Worrall to prod home Phil Foden's cross from Ilkay Gundogan's short corner to give Manchester City a 12th-minute lead against newly promoted Nottingham Forest. Of course, this was raucously received and the noise in an English football ground always cuts through the air pretty nicely at those early season, late-summer evening matches, when the opening stages play out under a combination of the setting sun and the floodlights. Haaland's dad, Alfie, scored in such conditions on his City home debut against Sunderland 22 years earlier. His newborn son had just turned one month old.
So this was a lovely scene, but one to be expected against an overmatched Forest. Then something a little curious happened. From the press box, you could make out a sort of secondary, rumbling cheer. It was different from the normal post-goal hubbub. It sounded… giddy, as if 50,000 people were trying to suppress excited giggles.
Haaland was coming off the back of a blistering second-half hat-trick to turn a 2–0 deficit against Crystal Palace into a 4–2 win four days earlier. The Norway striker's opener versus Forest was his seventh goal in five Premier League appearances. The only thing I can attribute that different crowd noise to is a collective feeling that "he's going to do something mad now, isn't he?" It's something I've noticed plenty of times since, a particular feature of Haaland's goals early in games when he and City are in form.
The Palace hat-trick took 19 minutes from first goal to last and, 26 minutes after his first against Forest, Haaland had another match ball. In the 6–3 derby win over Manchester United the following month, he became the first Premier League player to score hat-tricks in three consecutive home games. That success over the old enemy was the ninth of 11 successive games in all competitions where Haaland found the net.
"From the moment he's signed, it felt like his house," says Simon Bajkowski from the Manchester Evening News, one of City's regular press pack who were obliged to pore over record lists every week as Haaland churned through several best marks.
"In his first season, especially in those first few months, there was almost a disappointment if somebody else scored," says Sam Lee, Manchester City correspondent at The Athletic.
"Do you remember when Foden didn't square to him against Bournemouth [in Haaland's first home game]? Everyone loves Foden, obviously, but it was almost like, 'Who's this little p**** not squaring to Haaland?' People really wanted him to score. There was a game against Southampton. They were 3–0 up and he hadn't scored, and then he got the fourth. The reaction was mad."
"I've never seen a stadium go quite as feral on such a regular basis for one person scoring," says Jack Gaughan, who covers City for the Daily Mail. "It just goes absolutely bananas every time. It's surreal. It's everything about him, the way he looks…"
Haaland is unquestionably adored at City and there are several supporting factors behind his gargantuan tally of goals. He ended 2022/23 with 36 in the Premier League, the most in a top-flight campaign since England's top league rebranded in 1992. He made it back-to-back Golden Boots in 2023/24, while he is the fastest to 100 goals for a single club in European history (105 games) alongside Cristiano Ronaldo at Real Madrid. There's the familial link to City, those boyhood pictures of him wearing the Eidos and Thomas Cook-sponsored home shirts. And the boy became quite the man: Haaland's freakish physical attributes and capabilities move you close to sensory overload when he's in full flight. How does a human that big start moving so fast, so quickly? How did he get his leg up there to volley the ball into the net without decapitating anyone? Why are there defenders strewn about the place like skittles?
"The only other thing that I could compare Haaland to is that Yaya Toure season in 2013/14," says Ahsan Naeem from the 93:20 podcast, referring to Toure's bravura campaign that ended with City as champions and the big Ivorian scoring 20 Premier League goals from central midfield. He hit 24 across all competitions, including an all-time screamer in the Carabao Cup final.
"Yaya had that season where he just looks like a grown-up playing against under-11s in every single game," Ahsan continues. "Haaland, when he's on one, it's a little bit like that. You feel like there is somebody there who's got an unfair advantage over the players around him. Guardiola is the king of rotation. Nobody's got a guaranteed spot. And yet Erling Haaland plays. The recognition that this guy is just a phenomenon is there, even from Pep."
Pep Guardiola and Erling Haaland of Man City
Getty Images
That recognition is a notable factor. A strong hunch is that most City fans I spoke to for this book would still have Sergio Aguero in their all-time XI at centre-forward ahead of Haaland. Sergio has the statistical advantage of being City's record goal-scorer, no matter how quickly Haaland is chomping up the ground between them; he also has the romantic advantage of that goal and all the other indelible moments.
Additionally, for all the virtues of having a ravenous goals robot, Guardiola's City teams of 2017 to 2020 with Aguero up front were often more thrilling to watch. Aesthetically, the Haaland version falls short of that vintage and the false-nine period preceding his arrival. When City's number nine has an off day and doesn't provide much of a goal threat, he can be borderline hard to watch. Yet, where Haaland is concerned, Guardiola would never repeat his 2016 Camp Nou call, putting a fully fit Aguero on the bench against Barcelona. The City boss badly wanted Harry Kane the summer before Erling arrived and the England captain would have been stylistically more straightforward to accommodate, but the sheer weight of numbers easily makes Haaland worth the hassle.
"I think City played better than ever during the seasons without a number nine, without Aguero and without Haaland," says Marti Perarnau. "But they won the Premier League with Aguero, without a nine and with Haaland. So one thing is the records and the trophies; another thing is our feeling about the style of the play.
"They played better without a nine and with Phil Foden or Bernardo Silva as the false nine. Why? Because you have superiority in the middle. You have one more man than the rival. But perhaps it's not enough to win the Champions League or to win some other big matches. It is a blessed problem for Pep to have Haaland. If you ask him in private, not in public, of course he would say he prefers Haaland to be in the team. Haaland plays very well but makes some mistakes outside of the box. Okay. This is a price to pay for him to be in the team."
• • •
Guardiola's tactics aren't the only thing Haaland has shifted seemingly irreversibly at Manchester City. Attendances at Premier League manager press conferences have had an international feel for some time. That ramped up at City following Guardiola's arrival, with a notable Catalan contingent decamping to Manchester. The main man was a sure thing in terms of news coverage, but those deployed for niche single-nation concerns have a more precarious brief. It was hard not to feel for the Chilean reporter sent to Manchester for the Claudio Bravo 2016/17 disasterclass that preceded City loudly failing to sign Alexis Sanchez.
Even though he was ostensibly in Manchester to follow one player, Jens Friberg, from the Norwegian newspaper VG, had more in common with the Catalan reporters from six years earlier. Big Erl was going to be the only show in town, something that became indisputable after he flew out of the blocks.
Erling Haaland
"In the beginning, the first six or seven games he had in his first season, it felt like a historic period for the country of Norway," Friberg says, keen to justify the hyperbole.
"Just because he blew everything away. Breaking records for how many goals and this and that, scoring the three hat-tricks in a row. Whatever expectation you might have beforehand, he just exceeded it and exceeded it again. It is interesting and I think that Pep always says this when he's in one of his philosophical moods: that our legacy will not be all the trophies or records we break, but the emotions that our football gives us. I think maybe that's some of the point with Erling. You have some sort of anticipation that whenever he is on the pitch something funny or spectacular or out of the ordinary might happen. That's what gets people to come back."
Perceptions of Haaland, the record-breaking and title-winning footballer, are wrapped up in the reality of Haaland, the 21st-century entertainment product. The manner in which he has crossed over into popular culture means Friberg's seemingly grand reference to "a historic period for the country of Norway" makes sense. Plenty of Norwegians will remember precisely what they were doing and what was going on in their lives when one of their compatriots was turning the richest football league in the world into his own personal playground.
"It's been well documented in quite a lot of research that younger football fans and younger sports fans do follow athletes and individuals," says Rory Squires, director of Squires Media, a content agency for the global sports industry.
"Not more so than teams, but certainly proportionally, that's gone up massively. They call it 'fluid fandom' in the industry. I think there are a few things at play. There's the globalisation of football, particularly making it very, very easy for people to follow superstars from different countries. You can't underestimate the social media aspects as well. Fans can interact with or at least follow individuals directly. These athletes are individual brands in themselves. It's not necessarily the team; it's more about the players. Top players are very well advised these days about controlling their own narrative, how they speak to fans and followers.
"So I think it's a natural shift, but it is generational and it's very much younger people. There's also a very prominent trend, certainly with U.S. sports, of younger fans preferring to watch highlights rather than live sport and sit through a whole game. And that sort of ties into that narrative."
Haaland, the larger-than-life super goal-scorer, is perfectly placed to take advantage of this phenomenon. In terms of the savvy Squires references as being strong among this generation of footballers, Haaland also has the expertise of his father to call upon. The people around him know how to harness his appeal, while Alfie's guiding hand keeps this on track by helping him to navigate the day-to-day of professional football, an area where his aptitude is clear.
"When it comes to his social intelligence, I think it's sky high," Friberg says, considering how Haaland instantly became a big personality within the City dressing room of proven, hard-bitten winners. "You can see it from every club he's been at. And we only get those few glimpses of it with the documentaries and one press conference here and there, which is frustrating, of course."
As with all modern superstars, Team Haaland keeps a close eye on the brand, the image and access to both. Haaland himself moving away from the monosyllabic, stroppy teen interviews that were his staple at Borussia Dortmund has helped matters. The glimpses fans are afforded — such as the Norwegian nailing an impression of John Stones saying "The Louvre" in a Barnsley accent — paint a picture of a grounded, everyman p***-taker. While viral posts of Haaland's goal celebrations appeal to the global fan base, it's these personal moments that play well in Manchester.
The element of the Haaland story that has moved his handlers closest to damage control relates to both City's ownership and his place within modern Norway's national story. Ahead of a World Cup qualifier against Gibraltar in March 2021, Haaland and his Norway teammates wore T-shirts that read "Human Rights, on and off the pitch" as they lined up for the anthems, to protest and raise awareness about conditions in Qatar ahead of the 2022 tournament.
Stale Solbakken's national team presented as a politically aware group from a country with a proud social democratic tradition (though conversations about whether or not Norway should boycott the Qatar World Cup became moot when they failed to qualify). Haaland's part in these protests naturally grabbed attention, both because he was fast becoming the country's most marketable star and because that status and the realities of modern elite football would probably bring him into conflict with the powers that be.
Three months before the pre-match protest in Gibraltar, Haaland attended the Aspetar sports medicine facility in Qatar for a week of treatment and rehabilitation after sustaining a muscular injury in action for Dortmund. "The facilities at Aspetar are perfect and the doctors I met were excellent. I have recovered from the injury that I was suffering a lot from," he said.
During lockdown, Haaland posted footage of himself working out in a Boca Juniors jersey at a time when the Argentinian giants' shirt sponsor was Qatar Airways. "Erling doesn't represent us when he isn't here. But if I could choose, he would be wearing a different shirt," Solbakken said. Such instances became small beer compared to Haaland signing for Manchester City, with his entourage both irritated by questions regarding the club's Abu Dhabi ownership and reluctant to engage with them.
"I think it was very in the zeitgeist, to be socially aware of the human rights stuff leading up to Qatar 2022," Friberg says. "Erling, as we could see continually through this period, always had a little bit of a step back. He didn't participate as strongly as the rest. It seemed very intentional, like he would always be able to say to, for instance, if PSG was an actual option for him, 'Yeah, look, I was there because I had to be, but don't worry. I'm chill about it.'
"This obviously became a big debate when he signed for City, just because it was also at the peak of the social awareness. He got a lot of stick for it back home. There were human rights activists or former prisoners of the Abu Dhabi regime who came out and said he was legitimising them — very predictable criticism. It was a big story. He always escaped it by not commenting on it and he was always allowed to not comment on it. There was one time he was asked directly."
Haaland - seleção da Noruega
This was in September 2022, at the height of 'Haalandmania, season one' in Manchester. Sitting alongside Solbakken at a pre-match press conference for the national team, Haaland fielded a question from Norway's state broadcaster NKR regarding whether City's owners were using him to "sportswash" their reputation.
"I've never met them, so I don't know them as such," he said, before claiming the reporter had made some "quite strong accusations" regarding City's owners, about which he couldn't "say much".
Haaland added: "My father has played there. I have scored 14 goals and got a good start to the season. It's the sports aspects that I think about. Once again, I made a good club choice when it comes to the coaches, players, this and that. I've been a City fan and that's how it's been. When I went to City, it was to develop myself as much as possible in a positive manner. I have a dream, like many others, to be the best in the world."
Solbakken sat alongside Haaland during the exchange, his face suggesting that a successful stint as a poker player probably isn't in his future. But he defended his star man later in the week.
"I'm not saying he should be protected from such questions or that he shouldn't have to answer them, but I think that some of them are out of proportion," he said. With that, as is often the case around these flashpoints, the perma-intrigue of events on the pitch meant the controversy died down.
"No one talks about it any more," says Friberg. "I think it would be the same everywhere, really. The human rights stuff is just in the background all the time. It's like with climate change, you know what's happening, you know it's there. But you can't just shout 'Human Rights!' every time he scores. I guess, with Saudi Arabia getting the World Cup in 2034, we'll have it again."
BUY NOW: Glory Days for the Waifs and Strays: Identity and Meaning in the Rise of the Modern Manchester City