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Journalism of Courage
As the euphoria around the World Cup subsides and the attention turns to club football, a certain Erling Haaland’s name has started to engulf the collective psyche of the football world again. A man who was shattering records on his way to become the Premier League top scorer in record time, had to take a backseat during the month-long fiesta in Qatar but now, it’s only a matter of time before the world becomes his again.
The man who started as a skinny teenager in Bryne, a quaint little town in Western Norway, has had the world latching on to his every move when he burst onto the scene in 2019-20 playing for RB Leipzig and later, Borussia Dortmund.
Perhaps, it’s an apt time to look back at his developmental years as his growth doesn’t mirror the usual route that elite players take. He wasn’t spotted and produced early by a big academy; instead he was reared through community football.
Over at Bryne during his formative years Haaland used to play with friends within his own small community, one boy among 40, Alf Ingve Berntsen, his childhood coach recalls.
“From the age of 11, we began to talk about how he would become an international player because he was very good technically and began to show great intelligence. His mentality was very good for football. The part that was missing was the physical part,” he told Sky Sports in an interview.
“He started to be part of our team when he was eight years old. Our team was made up of children who were born in 1999; Erling was born in 2000. We tried to keep them together depending on the year they were born, but Erling was ahead of his group so he started to be part of our work with players a year older than him,” Berntsen recalled in the Coaches Voice website.
“He was very skinny but we knew his genetics were very good. We had to be patient and give him time to grow. Imagine what this guy will do when he has muscles, ” Berntsen added.
At 14, the growth spurt hit Haaland but according to Berntsen, the time before his transformation was what made him the player that he is today.
“He had a longer period to develop those technical skills. It is why you should not always look at what a player is doing on the pitch but what they are trying to do. Sometimes, you see a player trying to do something good but their body is growing and does not respond, ” he said.
If you watch Haaland’s game closely, more often than not you’ll see him not rely on just his physical strength to outmanoeuvre opponents. When he is anywhere near the penalty box, the wheels in his head start turning and he either takes a one-touch snap shot from range or finds himself space in the box so that the ball can be fed to him. That intelligence is uncanny. And Berntsen agrees.
“In order to do that (one touch shots), he has had to make smart movements in the box. That tells you that it is not all about his strength or his physicality, it is about his smartness as a player,” he said.
Berntsen also added that in order to mold Haaland into the player he is today, Bryne played a huge part due to the town getting less media attention than the bigger cities.
“Having a safe and good environment, having Inge as a father, and being surrounded by his childhood friends has helped him a lot. Besides the influence of his father, it was very important for him to grow up in a town like Bryne, a place where he didn’t have all the media attention that surrounds young footballers today. If he had grown up in a big city – like Madrid, Paris or London – he would still have become a good player, because Erling always wanted to have fun and loved to train. But maybe in Bryne it is easier than in other cities to let young players grow up without pressure and enjoy football without taking it too seriously,” he wrote in the Coaches Voice website.
“In Madeira, they have the airport named after Cristiano Ronaldo,” says Berntsen. “Bryne is not like that. It is a hard life. It is windy and wet. You have to work hard to make a living. The mentality is still like this. But we have posters of him at the club. That is a huge thing in Bryne. That means we hugely appreciate him. But we do not have statues.”
Now, Haaland is playing and dominating in one of the most famous leagues in the world but that upbringing that he has had in the sleepy little town with no proper training facilities, will always help him keep his feet firmly rooted to the ground. Occasionally, while playing for Manchester City, you can catch a glimpse of that little boy who had once made a name for himself back in Bryne, turning back the clock and just enjoying his football without the pressure attached to it. Something that is rare in the sport nowadays.
