Erling Haaland celebrates his hat-trick against Nottingham Forest. /
England
The Norwegian already has two records and has presented himself with nine goals in his first five league games
Erling Braut Haaland is already scary in the Premier League. The Norwegian striker, this summer’s star signing with the permission of Robert Lewandowski, has started his career in English football and could not have done better. The former Borussia Dortmund player scored his second consecutive hat trick against Nottingham Forest on Wednesday and now has nine goals in five games. No one in the entire history of English football had achieved such figures in so few games.
“He has a special talent, an incredible nose for goal, he smells them. He had not come into contact with the ball and scored with his first touch. His definition is very good and his work ethic is also fantastic. We are delighted”, said Pep Guardiola when asked about Haaland. The Manchester City coach had no choice but to surrender to the virtues of his center forward. A while earlier, Haaland had destroyed Forest with three goals in just 26 minutes. It was an express exhibition in the first half in which the Norwegian led his team 6-0 with a goal in advance at the near post, another as an opportunist when taking advantage of a rebound in the area and one more with a header. A perfect triplet with left, right and head.
And it is that Haaland is a striker who is showing in his first months in England that he manages all the resources to reach the goal. Manchester City represents a change of style for a ‘9’ who has become accustomed to playing in space at Borussia Dortmund and who now has to mix that voracity with the association with players like Foden, Bernardo Silva, Mahrez or De Bruyne. All that talent from the second line Guardiola has put at the service of a player who knows that he is in the ideal place to continue growing and reach the top. It is the definitive weapon that the ‘skyblue’ needed to aspire to everything.
In the first five days of the Premier League, Haaland has been determined to show that his goal is to make history in one of the most powerful leagues in the world. He scored two against West Ham, one against Newcastle and two hat-tricks against Crystal Palace and Nottingham. These figures exceed the eight goals scored by Sergio Agüero in the 2011-2012 campaign and Mick Quinn in the 1992-1993 campaign in the same interval in matches. The voracity of the former Dortmund also allows him to be the player who has taken the least time to make two trebles in England. He has only needed five games, for the 21 it took Demba Ba, a player who held the previous record, in 2011 with Newcastle.
