Jaw-dropping Erling Haaland reduces football to its base unit with his goals

A s the players left the pitch at half time, the Etihad Stadium’s in-house big screen began to replay, in slow-mo close-up, the moment that had just passed, Manchester City’s third goal in what would eventually become a 7-0 (seven) victory.

There was something ludicrously lovely about the imagery, the basic human design, the cold, cold beauty of the sky blue shirts, the snowflakes falling in slow, fat, perfect flakes, Erling Haaland scrolling past the faces in the crowd and gliding in a single movement into the perfect Olympic-grade knee slide, a footballer who expresses power, edge and certainty more clearly than any other.

He was, frankly, jaw-dropping here; unstoppable in a way that felt different to any other, previous version of unstoppable, sui generis in its outsize strengths. Haaland had just completed the perfect hat-trick, even if the right foot element involved the ball being punted into his leg and pinballing back over the goalline.

No matter. We have more where that came from. When he left the pitch with 63 minutes gone Haaland had taken eight shots, all eight on target, scored five goals and completed 11 passes. Here is a footballer who seems to be reducing football to its base unit, a perfect piece of maths, a goalscoring super-conductor.

By the time his fifth hit the net on 57 minutes Haaland wasn’t really celebrating, just laughing, a man drowning in honey. It is easy to forget, seeing only his size, his power and certainty, that he is still a slightly goofy 22-year-old, that he has never won a major trophy, travels with his dad, has only ever known the pressure of being groomed for these moments. It is one of football’s indestructible qualities that even in the middle of this spectacle of