Marco Reus didn’t feed the hype. Invited to praise Erling Haaland’s performance on Wednesday night, the Borussia Dortmund captain told Sky Deutschland that “everyone” had turned up for the Germans in Seville, in the first half at least.
Caretaker manager Edin Terzic, too, was a little circumspect in his evaluation of the Norwegian striker after his side’s 3-2 win over Sevilla in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie. Instead of superlatives, Terzic offered up technical explanations. “Haaland was playing a special role (tactically) today,” the 38-year-old said. “We didn’t want him involved in active pressing but behind the ball, for us to hit him directly, beyond the defence.”
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It wasn’t quite the gushing praise reporters had hope for after two goals and one assist that amounted to another marquee performance in Europe by Haaland, a giant blond and yellow exclamation mark. Dortmund, with their rich experience with high-flying youngsters — think Lars Ricken, Tomas Rosicky, Nuri Sahin, Mats Hummels, Neven Subotic, Mario Gotze, Ousmane Dembele, Christian Pulisic, Giovanni Reyna — will always err on the cautious side in public, eager not to fuel the flames too much.
But their near silence in the face of the forward’s masterclass didn’t feel deliberate, let alone forced. It felt more as if nothing needed to be said. In little over a year in Westphalia, Haaland has gone from sensation and phenomenon to a fact of life, like “A” coming before “B”, or the sun rising each day. A reliable, inevitable purveyor of goals at a superstar level. Do Barcelona players talk much about Lionel Messi? Paris Saint-Germain’s about Kylian Mbappe? Bayern Munich’s about Robert Lewandowski? It’s a given that they will score and play well, as long as “everyone else” does a reasonable job and finds them with their passes.
There was no point to Terzic to delve any deeper into Haaland’s clever movement, wildebeest-like strength and pace or his finishing with sub-zero calmness. They all know that’s what he does, in every training session or in a Champions League game, there’s hardly a difference. The 20-year-old has now scored 18 times in 13 games at this level — no one’s done more in so few outings.
Haaland himself offered only a few words after his latest global statement. The main line was that Dortmund, down at sixth in the Bundesliga and drifting in inconsistency, had for once showed up collectively, doing their playing potential justice with a strong dose of determination and proper attitude. “We had more motivation and passion today,” he said. “Why? I don’t know, to be honest. It felt as if everyone was ready in their head.”
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Maybe one way to put it was that the whole team were swept up in the brilliantly energetic way Haaland had led the line, in more ways than one.
His first goal, a gorgeous one-two with Jadon Sancho to make it 2-1 just before the half-hour mark, and irresistible one-man stampede at a terrified defence caught the eye most, but his hold-up play in the run-up to Mahmoud Dahoud’s opener eight minutes earlier was the real showpiece on the night.
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Haaland had come deep on the left side of the pitch to collect a sharp Manuel Akanji pass through the lines with his back to goal, controlled the ball, then extricated himself from a Joan Jordan-Sergio Escudero sandwich with a deft turn and giant strides that ripped up what was left of the Sevilla resistance. There was no stopping him.
This assist also revealed the lesser told part of his story over the last 13 months. Haaland had arrived from Red Bull Salzburg as the consummate killer, but there was work to be done when it came to a bit of love and tenderness to be shown for the ball. Dortmund’s then-coach Lucien Favre privately lamented Haaland’s rather clumsy control and inability to find team-mates in small spaces. But the youngster has worked on those deficits with the dedication of a Shaolin monk.
Haaland’s life is devoted to football. There really is nothing else for him, which goes some way to explain why he has kept evolving at the same supernatural pace he shows on the pitch, filling in the few gaps in his game as if it was an easy crossword. Lewandowski, too, was a little ungainly in possession when he first appeared for Dortmund a decade ago, incidentally. It took the player many feel would have won last year’s cancelled Ballon d’Or a season as a second striker under Jurgen Klopp and a pretty underwhelming debut campaign in the Champions League (six games, one goal) in the following 2011-12 campaign to become a fully-formed No 9 of international repute.
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Haaland has made a jump in evolution, however, bypassing that embryonic stage in the course of a just a few months. It’s been a growth spurt, literally. “I grew by half a centimetre and I’ve lost seven kilos since I came to Dortmund,” he told countryman and former striker Jan-Aage Fjortoft in a TV interview earlier this week. Just as interesting was his explanation for being notoriously curt in interviews. Haaland revealed he was intent on keeping things as brief as possible when not talking in his native language, because he doesn’t want to make “any mistakes”.
Simplicity is perfection.
Reporters have become used to that sparseness in front of microphones. Haaland, as ever, hardly said anything in the aftermath of a result that felt hugely important in the context of Dortmund’s indifferent domestic season.
There was a line about the team taking “the positive mindset” — his mindset, in other words — into Saturday night’s Revierderby against Schalke, as well as an admission of sorts: yes, he said, Mbappe’s hat-trick against Barcelona the night before had provided “a boost” for him. There was youthful excitement about one of his generational peers tearing it up, in that answer, as well as an insight into his self-appraisal. Mbappe, just one goal ahead in the Champions League-goals-scored-under-the-age-of-21 stakes, is the one he’s looking out for.
It was impossible to suppress thoughts that Erling vs Kylian will be the defining shootout of this decade, a new duopoly to shape the football landscape.
In Dortmund, they won’t say much about that prospect, but not because of any fear that he’ll soon score goals in another club’s colours. It’s more that no one really wonders any more whether Haaland will take over the mantle from Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
They know that he already has.
(Top photo: Javier Montano/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)