Where Erling Haaland SHOULD have signed in 2022!
4Fifty-one. Million. Pounds. That is the amount it took for Erling Haaland, the brightest young forward in world football, to be prised from Borussia Dortmund to Manchester City as per his release clause.
In a depressed market owing to the pandemic, we might have had the mother of all transfer sagas with the bidding war restricted to agent fees and wages, not the set €60m release clause.
Manchester City were caught in a perfect storm, and so all but signed the 21-year old Norwegian without competition.
Ligue 1 offered little competition to a player who had already completed Bundesliga football, so PSG was off the table.
Real Madrid were focused on one Galactico at a time and the summer of 2022 was the turn of Kylian Mbappe to join the Bernabeu.
Their Clasico rivals Barcelona were intrigued but ultimately their finances were in such a mess that they couldn’t afford the fee.
Bayern would have signed him as the latest in a long line of their fabled ‘poach the best Dortmund talent’ strategy, but they already had Robert Lewandowski tied down to 2023.
Manchester United’s failure to qualify for the Champions League had them out of the picture and a return to his birthplace: Leeds, was well out of the question.
However, all six of these clubs were heavily touted to sign the Norwegian in the past two years. This week, we will explore all of these potential worlds.
#Haaland #MCFC #RealMadrid
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Voice: Jake Doyle (@jakedoyle93)
Words: Jake Doyle (@jakedoyle93)
Edit: Jake Doyle (@jakedoyle93)
What If Football is a form of footballing storytelling that takes the audience down a different path to our current reality.
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