Erling Haaland is so much more than just a superstar striker on the world’s best team. Right now the Norwegian center forward is known first and foremost as the man who last spring broke the record for the most Premier League goals scored in a single season.
But before all is said and done with his career, he could go down as the G.O.A.T. pure scorer in the beautiful game. He provides a lot more than just goals for Manchester City, Haaland is also pure box office.
Looking at the list of Man City wages for the entire roster, you’ll see that he’s actually second, not first. Kevin De Bruyne is the highest-paid Manchester City player, with a weekly wage of £400,000. Erling Haaland earns a weekly wage of £375,000. Jack Grealish is third, taking in a weekly wage of £300,000. To analyze the total cost, and thus, return on investment for all Man City salaries, you have to consider the transfer fees too. And Grealish leads the way, at £100m, becoming the first English born player to top that nice round figure, when he was brought over from Aston Villa in 2021.
De Bruyne is actually third, (£68.4m from Wolfsburg in 2015) with Josko Gvardiol (£78m from RB Leipzig, earlier this month) sandwiched in between. Haaland is just outside the top ten!
Yes, seriously, despite the fact that Borussia Dortmund sold him to City only last summer, he doesn’t even crack the top ten.
How is that for a guy who has been directly involved in 29 goals (22 goals and 7 assists) in just 19 league matches at the Etihad Stadium. Oh and during his first season at Man City, all they did was win the treble. The Cityzens have picked up a league-leading 55 from a possible 60 points at home since the beginning of last season, i.e. since Haaland moved over from BVB.
So he doesn’t just score goals, he helps win games; at a level that dominant even for City’s Pep Guardiola era standards. And he’s search engine gold too.
According to Online PR Firm Digital Funnel, Man City’s fixtures, in general, generate more web search interest than any other Premier League club, with Haaland being the PL’s most Googled player, generating about 2.7 million searches per month.
Meanwhile City-Liverpool is the Premiership’s most Googled game, moving the needle to the tune of 1.5 million monthly searches globally. So Haaland provides not just ROI, but SEO, as he leads the way on Digital Funnel’s list of players who inspire the most Google searches.
Haaland is far ahead of the runner-up, which is interestingly enough Richarlison of Tottenham Hotspur. So when you think of what Erling Haaland brings to the club in terms of publicity, media attention, brand awareness, whatever you want to call it, his impact is priceless. You can’t truly quantify all that he brings to their table.
Although the BBC program, “Haaland: Made in Norway,” does a good job conveying that.