As the Norwegian looks to fire City to Champions League glory against Inter, GOAL takes a look at his quest for physical perfection.
Hundreds of cars line the car park at Manchester City’s training ground and one sticks out in particular – a Rolls Royce. It belongs to Erling Haaland. There is nothing unusual about top footballers owning luxury cars, but Haaland’s motor is different to most – according to legend, it contains a cooking stove.
Even when he is on the move, Haaland wants to be able to eat top-quality food. His love for cooking was plain to see when, during City’s Premier League title celebrations last month at a high-end restaurant in the centre of Manchester, the striker, wearing silk pyjamas, went into the kitchen to grill his own steaks, leaving the chefs with their jaws on the floor.
Haaland has been described as a freak of nature, but while he is blessed with the ideal genetics – a footballer father and a heptathlete mother – his phenomenal physical condition is not down to chance.
From his diet to his sleep pattern through to his post-match massage routine, Haaland’s daily regime is meticulously planned and a key reason why he has scored a stunning 52 goals this season in 52 games, firing City to the Premier League title, the FA Cup and the Champions League final.
‘He eats like a bear’
Haaland has experienced a huge growth spurt in recent years, fuelled by his insatiable eating habits. The striker says he consumes around 6,000 calories a day (adult men are supposed to consume around 2,500) and eating is a huge part of his life.
Norway team-mate Josh King said he had never seen anyone consume as much food as Haaland, remarking: “He just eats like a bear”. And there is something animalistic about the striker’s eating habits. While vegan diets have been become common among modern footballers, Haaland is an unashamed lover of meat.
That might have something to do with growing up in a rural community in Bryne, Norway, where he would help out his grandfather, a potato and pig farmer. But the type of meat he eats is unusual. As well as liking steak, Haaland eats cow’s hearts and livers. Even Dwayne Johnson, better known as The Rock, expressed surprise when he learned of Haaland’s diet.
The striker explained his eating habits in the documentary Erling Haaland: The Big Decision. “Eating quality food that is as local as possible is the most important,” he said. “People say meat is bad for you, but which? The meat you get at McDonald’s, or the local cow eating grass right there?”
No booze – but plenty of filtered water
Haaland also indulges in pasta, a former favourite dish of footballers but which has fallen out of fashion in recent times. His father, Alfie, cooks him lasagne the day before each home game, which helped him score back-to-back hat-tricks against Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest. And he is a regular at Italian eateries in Manchester, with one restaurant opening specially for him so he can eat in private, away from the public glare.
While a fair few City players indulge in nightlife – Guardiola remarked that his side “drunk all the alcohol in Manchester” after winning the title – Haaland is not known for drinking much booze.
“He is the best professional I have ever seen” said Jack Grealish of the Norwegian. “His mindset is something you won’t see again. He does everything. Recovers; in the gym; 10 hours of treatment a day; ice baths; diet. That’s why he is what he is. But I swear, I couldn’t be like that!
“We have a great friendship, but he will point at me after a game and say: ‘Hey. Don’t you go out tonight partying’. I just tell him to shut up and go and sit in his ice bath.”
But Haaland still takes a big interest in what he drinks. He insists on drinking filtered water, while also drinking kale-infused milk, calling it his “magic potion”.
Taking sleep seriously
As well as taking his diet seriously, Haaland is passionate about getting a good night’s sleep, calling it “perhaps the most important thing in life”. Cristiano Ronaldo, for example, has taken a huge interest in sleep patterns, talking of the benefits of taking regular naps. Haaland is more traditional, preferring to get to sleep by 10.30pm and turning off his technological devices long before he climbs into bed. But he also uses modern technology to help him get the rest he needs.
He puts on orange, blue-light glasses before going to bed which hide natural light, and wears an Oura ring on his finger to measure the quality of his sleep and his heart rate.
Late-night massages to stay injury-free
Sleep and diet are crucial to any elite player’s performance, but injury can derail the most promising of seasons and even wreck a career. Haaland had a checkered injury history before arriving at City, missing 16 matches for Borussia Dortmund last season, mostly with muscle injuries.
But he and the club have worked hard to keep him fit and relatively injury-free. Guardiola has talked openly about the club’s concerns about his injury history and credited the medical staff and physios for keeping him in shape.
Haaland has been unavailable for only three games this season, recovering quickly from each setback. The club asked sports therapist Mario Pafundi to accompany him on international duty with Norway to ensure he kept the same routine.
Haaland also takes his own initiative to stay injury-free. After the Champions League quarter-final first leg victory against Bayern Munich, he headed straight to the training ground – conveniently located opposite the road from the Etihad Stadium – for an hour-long massage.
Generous on and off the pitch
Although Haaland has been likened to Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Ronaldo in some respects, and there is no denying his confident persona, he does not appear to have the selfish streak that has afflicted those other two players and dragged down some of their clubs as a result.
During the recent Premier League win over Leeds, Haaland passed up the opportunity to add to his goal haul when City were awarded a penalty, offering the ball to Ilkay Gundogan instead so the midfielder could complete his hat-trick.
Gundogan missed from the spot and Guardiola was angry with Haaland for not taking it himself, but he also commended the striker for the gesture. “It shows how nice and generous Erling is,” he said.
Guardiola has also spoken of how pleasantly surprised he was to see how much Haaland celebrates when his team-mates score: “It’s difficult to find a striker with these numbers and normally you think, ‘Oh, it’s just me, me, me and me’, and he’s a guy who’s completely the opposite. That’s what surprised me the most about Erling since he arrived.”
Haaland also showed his generous side when leaving Borussia Dortmund last year, gifting each player in the squad a Rolex watch worth around £5,000 each.
Swearing on camera and laughing at Stones
Haaland might have appeared arrogant in his first few exchanges with the media, giving very short, sometimes one-word answers in post-match interviews while at Dortmund. He still does not engage too much with the media, but when he does, he comes across as likeable, down to earth and natural. Who could forget his Sky Sports interview after scoring against West Ham, when he referred to an earlier chance he missed?
“It’s a bit sh*t but that’s how it is,” he said. When told off for swearing by the interviewer, his natural instinct was to respond “Oh sorry, sh*t, sorry” and bursting into laughter.
He is personable with his team-mates, striking up a strong relationship with John Stones as well as Grealish. He went viral for lovingly mocking Stones’ pronunciation of ‘The Louvre’ during the filming of a recent advert, while earlier in the year he had an animated debate with the defender and Rodri in the gym over whether they would rather have to run away from a crocodile or a hippo.
He has done hardly any interviews in his first season, but at City’s media day ahead of the Champions League final, he was friendly with reporters, taking questions from a 20-strong group in his stride. And he knows how to hold an audience, prompting several belly laughs from journalists.
But he does his real talking on the pitch, leaving fans in raptures, onlookers breathless and opponents shell-shocked. Behind the ruthless finishing and athletic prowess there is a real appetite for self-improvement, a desire to not only be the best player in the world, but the best of all-time. An appetite even bigger than his hunger for cow’s hearts and livers.
Video: Erling Haaland: ‘Are defenders scared of me?’
Source: goal.com
