“Another day at the office,” Erling Haaland posted alongside a picture of his latest tussle with a Premier League centre-back.
Last Saturday, it was Newcastle United’s Dan Burn, but before him it was Brighton & Hove Albion’s Jan Paul van Hecke, Fulham’s Calvin Bassey, Arsenal’s Gabriel, Everton’s Ben Godfrey… and there have been countless others.
“He’s the only striker I’ve seen in my life that makes more fouls to defenders than defenders to him,” his manager Pep Guardiola said in January, exasperated. “I never saw that. In the beginning of the season, the referees said it would be the opposite (in terms of holding another player or similar leading to a foul) but it’s completely the opposite, honestly.
“Every time Erling touches the opponent, it’s a foul from Erling. So, I don’t understand.”
You can call it the ‘Haaland tax’. The Norway centre-forward is so big, fast and fearsome that referees seem to let defenders get away with heavy-handed tactics to stop him, in a way that would not fly with smaller forwards.
Haaland’s Instagram post, featuring a picture of him and Burn wrestling, is the latest example of that, although Burn did get an early booking. That felt different to other examples, like this one with Van Hecke in January, which was not even given as a foul.
Those examples may be what annoys Guardiola and Haaland the most. The stats do not bear out what the City manager says about fouls committed and conceded: the Norwegian has been fouled 21 times in the Premier League this season, and has committed 18. Brentford’s Igor Thiago, another handful for defenders, has committed 48 fouls, by way of comparison.
But there is a very evident grey area, like the Van Hecke example above, where no fouls are given at all, despite Haaland being wrestled to the ground either in open play or at corners.
At set pieces, loopholes around contact before the ball comes into play are exploited to get the striker out of the equation before the ball is even kicked.
“Have you seen what happens in the boxes, not just with Man City?” Guardiola asked in January. “I don’t know how keepers can survive with the pushing and what happens there with keepers today. I don’t understand that and I don’t understand that every time Erling touches an opponent it’s a foul from Erling.”
It has been happening with Haaland since he signed for City from Borussia Dortmund in 2022, with Guardiola and his various assistants often incensed about defenders wrestling the striker even while the ball is in motion, without a foul being given.
Perhaps because of the rise in man-to-man marking — and City’s change in goalkeepers — it feels as if Haaland ends up in a running battle with a centre-back every couple of weeks at the moment.
And, it should be said, Haaland knows how to give as much as he gets — and for the most part he enjoys it. According to sources close to the 25-year-old, he appreciates the old-school, rough and tumble Premier League style that he grew up following during his dad’s time at City, Nottingham Forest and Leeds United.
“Erling Haaland today was the man of the match, for me,” Guardiola told the press after the Newcastle game last weekend. “Because he fought with Burn. Against man-marking, you have to play more direct — and if you don’t win that ball, or fight the 50-50 balls, you have no chance. And he did it.”
Man-to-man marking slowly started to creep in as a tactic against City during Haaland’s first season in the Premier League, 2022-23, and gradually City became more used to combatting it, chiefly by getting goalkeeper Ederson to launch pinpoint passes that travelled over defenders and landed behind them. That helps explain why the Brazilian recorded four assists last season.
Haaland generally tries to get onto passes like that by backing into defenders, rolling them and sprinting clear if they cannot stop him, meaning he does not even try to contest a header.
But with Ederson gone and few, if any, keepers able to recreate that kind of pass, City are playing more conventional long balls up to their centre-forward, with both summer signings Donnarumma and James Trafford sending a shorter, higher ball into areas where Haaland and his marker are more likely to try to win the ball first time, although he does still try the ‘roll and run’ when he can.
Although City look more direct than ever as a result of their attempts to play over the man-to-man press, Guardiola’s team have still played the fewest long balls in the league.
When they do go long, though, Haaland is usually the target — and they try to ensure he is isolated against his marker, with nobody even close to being able to help.
When Haaland plays up front with somebody else, his strike partner is stationed on the opposite side of the pitch, and those in deeper areas are tasked with dragging any other opposition defenders well away from Haaland, giving him as much space as possible.
Look at this example of Burn’s early booking. Antoine Semenyo and Omar Marmoush are far from the scene of the crime, isolating the centre-back against Haaland. That is where City believe the striker can do some of his best work.
One of the first, and perhaps most ill-tempered, of Haaland’s battles was with Everton’s Ben Godfrey, on New Year’s Eve 2022.
“We said before the game, we’ll get into him, hard as we can, get into him, first one, bang, as soon as you can,” former Everton defender Conor Coady later told ToffeeTV. “So two minutes into the game, Ben goes bang, right into the back of his ankle. So Haaland’s down. Next minute we stood organising, talking, and he gets up, makes a beeline for me and says, ‘was that you?’ and I pointed to Ben and said, ‘it was him!’”
Godfrey’s challenge actually came after just seven seconds, scraping his foot down Haaland’s ankle as he challenged for a high ball, leaving him with a ripped sock. No foul was given.
The pair traded fouls throughout the game. Haaland famously mocked Godfrey by pretending to complain and the City player celebrated in his face when he opened the scoring in a 1-1 draw.
Erling Haaland celebrating in Ben Godfrey’s direction (Daniel Chesterton/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
Shirt pulls, grapples, sly kicks, late challenges, off-the-ball barges and trash talk are all on the agenda.
Haaland had just set the Premier League goals record in his debut season when Antonio Rudiger had his first brush with him in Real Madrid and City’s May 2023 Champions League semi-final. The Germany defender knew he would be in for a tough night and watched YouTube videos of Haaland to prepare, according to sources close to him.
He concluded that he would need to get into the striker’s head to try to get an advantage, which is why he decided to cling tightly to his man in an attempt to annoy him. It has worked several times for Rudiger in the five games they have played against each other — but it did lead to City getting a penalty, which Haaland scored, in their 2-1 league-phase win at the Bernabeu in December.
Haaland certainly takes great satisfaction from the battles when he has come out on top, especially if a defender’s attempts to get really close and put him off end up having the opposite effect.
“At 1-1 he started grabbing my ass, and I thought, ‘what are you doing?’ So I fired myself up a bit and said to him, ‘thanks a lot for the motivation, let’s f***ing have it,’” Haaland told TV2, after one close encounter for Norway with Italy’s Gianluca Mancini in November. “Then I scored two goals, we win 4–1, so that’s great. Thanks to him!”
Haaland does seem to enjoy making a point of it when defenders’ extra efforts backfire.
“The first five minutes, he kept on pushing me, so I thought ‘alright, let’s have it’,” he told Sky Sports of Brentford’s Sepp van den Berg in October. “Then I started pushing him back.”
Haaland scored the only goal against Brentford, and when he was asked whether that kind of grappling motivates him, he responded: “Yeah, I think it helps me because, to be honest, I was a bit tired going into the game.
“I was thinking it’s going to be a tough game, but then after 10 seconds he started pushing me and he starts motivating me, so all praise to him honestly. He made me want to do that.”
That kind of thinking probably helps explain some hot-headed moments, like throwing the ball at Gabriel’s head in a game against Arsenal last season, but it also suggests there can be games where he does not feel especially motivated if he is fatigued.
That may have been a big factor in his quiet form in January, at a time when Guardiola said his striker was “exhausted”. There were several matches when he looked far easier for defenders to deal with, including against Manchester United and Bodo/Glimt, where he often came off second-best when challenging for the ball.
Van Hecke has tended to do well against Haaland, most recently in that sticky patch in January, and the eight-cap Netherlands international outlined his thought process after the 1-1 draw at the Etihad Stadium at the start of the year.
“It’s always a really hard battle, especially against him,” he told Brighton’s official website. “He’s probably the best striker in the world — you try to do everything to stop him and sometimes he puts everything on the line. You put everything on the line as well.
“It’s hard because he’s fast, strong and he can finish. But I think there’s a respect from both of us. It gives me a confidence boost. I have played against him before. I actually quite enjoyed it.”
When City played Newcastle in the Carabao Cup a week later, the night Guardiola said Haaland was exhausted, the striker did appear to come to life only late in the game, after he had seen a goal controversially ruled offside following a near six-minute VAR check. It was as if a feeling of injustice had motivated him to become more involved.
Then there was the game at Anfield in February, when Haaland showed his mettle to bury a last-minute penalty and deliver City’s first win at Liverpool, in front of fans, since 2003.
Haaland battled with Virgil van Dijk in the first half, although Guardiola highlighted after the match that the centre-forward “did not even try” to challenge the Liverpool centre-backs when City played up to them after the break.
Haaland battling with Virgil van Dijk of Liverpool for an aerial ball (Paul Ellis / AFP via Getty Images)
Perhaps it was no surprise that Guardiola singled out Haaland for the right reasons after the Newcastle game last weekend, making him the subject of a dressing-room speech in praise of his all-round effort, before declaring him man of the match to the media.
City do not like to do it too much, but they have to go long these days, and there is nobody else in the team better equipped to deal with it than Haaland.
Wily defenders can make life hard for him with a few dirty tricks — and they often get away with it — but an angry Haaland is generally the last thing any opponent wants.