This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on October 31, 2022 - November 6, 2022
Even in these hyper-inflationary times, £1 billion (RM5.4 billion) seems a lot to pay for a footballer. But that is the figure Erling Haaland’s agent predicts her client will one day be valued at when his commercial worth is combined with his transfer fee — as long as he keeps scoring with clockwork regularity.
The Norse goal god, 22, has taken the English Premier League (EPL) by storm since his €60 million switch from Borussia Dortmund to Manchester City. The fee was ridiculously low for a striker of his ability because of a release clause he inserted when joining the German club. But his salary — widely claimed to be a ridiculously high £800,000 a week with bonuses — is where Rafaela Pimenta comes in.
Dubbed the most powerful woman in football, the Brazilian lawyer, 49, took over as Haaland’s agent upon the death of Mino Raiola, 54, in April. Along with the player’s father, Alfie, Raiola and Pimenta have been the brains behind a budding career that could break the bank as well as records on the field.
After the Norwegian made EPL history by becoming the first to score hat-tricks in three consecutive games, she claimed: “I think Erling will be the first player to achieve a transfer that will be around £1 billion. If you put together his football value, his image value, his sponsor value, it is for sure £1 billion.”
With an astonishing 17 goals in 11 EPL games plus five in four appearances in the Champions League (UCL), he is already threatening to rewrite football history. The EPL record of 34 in a season, jointly held by Alan Shearer and Andy Cole, could have fallen by Christmas but for the Fifa World Cup break.
In the UCL, he has bagged 28 in 22 games for three clubs. In all competitions, he scored 62 goals by the age of 20, which makes Lionel Messi (32) and Cristiano Ronaldo (20) look like late developers. In tandem with France’s Kylian Mbappé, of Paris Saint-Germain, he is set to dominate the decade just as the above duo ruled the previous one.
As Haaland mania spreads from Norway to England, the fascination with this most lethal of predators is partly down to how simple he makes it look. Most of his goals are from inside the penalty area, many mere tap-ins. But what is almost supernatural is his knack of being in the right place — he has a priceless sixth sense for knowing where the ball will be.
A hulking 1.95m and 90kg, he lacks the velvet touch of Messi and, unlike Ronaldo, is only average with his head and rarely scores from distance. At Salzburg, he was awkward enough to be called “a cow” while sports website The Athletic claimed that “at his best, he moves with the glitchy perfection of a video game avatar”.
All this, coupled with his metronomic scoring, have led some to joke that he was created in a laboratory. Indeed, with the power of a heavyweight boxer and pace of an Olympic sprinter, he is quite a specimen. After a carefully programmed apprenticeship and before a well-charted financial future, he almost needs to miss a couple of open goals to prove he is human.
Fuelling the myth that he is some kind of experiment, a recent TV film revealed fastidious personal habits. It shows him asking his live-in PA to filtrate his drinking water as he takes delivery of vacuum-packed organic meat. He has a huge appetite: “a cow” who eats like a horse.
He uses blue-filter glasses when looking at his phone at night to help him fall asleep and, upon waking, exposes himself to sunlight to stimulate his circadian rhythm. Still something of a man-child, he has been known to sleep with his hat-trick match-balls. “They are my girlfriends,” he quips. But a weirdo he is anything but. Popular in dressing rooms, teammates say he is very much one of the boys.
With an international heptathlete mother and a father who played for Norway as well as City, Nottingham Forest and Leeds, he chose his parents well. Born in Leeds, he left at three years old and grew up in the small town of Bryne in southern Norway. At five, he set an age-group world record for the long jump that still stands. He soon took to cross-country skiing, handball and football — often against older boys.
As he grew from scrawny kid to super-heavyweight, he took calculated steps up the football ladder under ideal mentors. From his academy guru at Bryne to Manchester United legend Ole Gunnar Solksjaer at Molde, and then Jesse Marsch at Salzburg, his coaches might have been hand-picked.
At Dortmund, both Lucien Favre and Marco Rose were also renowned for nurturing youngsters, and he helped himself to 85 goals in 89 games over two Bundesliga seasons. And now he has improved another leap and bound under the wing of the duke of the dugout himself, Pep Guardiola.
Assuming that Dortmund would be a stepping stone to a super club, the low release clause ensured that he and his father would be in control of his destiny. And after talks with the only five clubs that could afford his wages, they chose City, Dad sharing a massive £42 million cut with Pimenta’s agency.
That may just be the first big dividend from football’s ultimate money machine. Significantly, there is no clause in his current five-year deal with City, but by 2027, he will be at his peak and able to cash in with a huge signing-on fee. If the goals keep coming and his image and sponsor values rise as expected, that £1 billion mark may not look so implausible — but only if football’s current structure with all its gluttonous excesses remains intact.
Stung by the obscene £41 million that Raiola allegedly collected from Paul Pogba’s move to Manchester United, Fifa are taking action to curb agency fees. In the end, whether it is Marie Antoinette’s cake, Imelda Marcos’ shoes or Raiola’s commission, it is excess that sparks the revolution — or at least change.
So, will the day a footballer moves for £1 billion be when the game says “enough is enough”? If only a sovereign wealth fund can afford it, it may well be the tipping point.
In the meantime, it is hard to think there were doubts about Haaland. Some predicted he would not slot into City’s passing carousel and could be another of Pep’s striker follies. There were also doubts whether he could make the step up from the Bundesliga.
But this knockabout kid from Norway has ridden roughshod over all that and been even better than Pep expected. Admitted the manager: “I didn’t know just how good he moves in small spaces in the box. He’s so smart to make these movements in the right moments.” He certainly has an insatiable appetite for more “girlfriends”.
The great pity is that we will not see him at the World Cup, which would have been the ultimate showcase for his talents. Norway did not qualify but made one of the biggest protests about human rights in Qatar with socially aware Haaland as one of the leaders.
It will be fascinating to see whether Pimenta gets her wish or sanity is restored to football’s distorted finances. Either way, the would-be billion-pound man should ensure plenty of Viking thunder.
Bob Holmes is a long-time sportswriter specialising in football
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