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Manchester City are gearing up for another tilt at the Champions League and in a new-look squad it is time for Erling Haaland to become a leader.
Erling Haaland knew why Manchester City had signed him. Everyone knew why Manchester City had signed him.
He joined a club that had scored 485 Premier League goals in five seasons, winning the title in four of them. As Haaland so succinctly put in his first season: “They didn't bring me in to win the Premier League because they already know how to win it.”
Instead, the Norwegian machine was signed to add that little bit extra in Europe. It was the trophy everyone at City wanted, and the trophy Haaland himself was desperate for.
"You can read between the lines,” he said in that first season, confidence as usual not lacking. “I'm here to try to help the club develop even more and to win the Champions League for the first time."
Mission accomplished within one season, when Haaland plundered a barely believable 52 goals in 53 Premier League games. But then in many ways, the striker wasn’t actually the missing piece of the jigsaw.
Okay, he scored 12 goals in his first eight games in the Champions League with City, including five in one match against RB Leipzig in the last-16 and home and away against Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals. But City had begun to reach the deepest stages of the competition on a regular basis anyway.
This time, they conquered the demons that had built up, but they kind of did it without Haaland. He didn’t score in the semi-final against Real Madrid despite City scoring five across the two legs, and he didn’t score in the final against Inter Milan.
None of that mattered because the Blues were champions of Europe and treble-winners. They had navigated the final stages without a decisive contribution from their new No. 9, so just imagine what they could do when he does start to score the goals in those big games.
But then Haaland didn’t score in the 4-4 aggregate draw with Real Madrid in the quarter-finals a year later either, and although he scored twice at the Etihad in the play-off round against the same opposition last year, his teammates contrived to let that advantage slip from their grasp and he wasn't fit enough to come off the bench in the second leg in Madrid.
So after three years and countless records, and with a staggering tally of 49 goals in 48 Champions League games in his career, it can still feel like we are waiting for Haaland’s defining contribution in Europe’s biggest competition.
Maybe it will be this season. Picking a key player in City’s attempts to conquer Europe again isn’t easy in Guardiola’s new-look squad, although you do tend to fall back on those who have been there and done it.
In truth, to win the Champions League probably requires Rodri to return to his very best form after his serious knee injury. It probably needs Phil Foden to finally take the mantle from Kevin De Bruyne as the team’s creative heartbeat.
It probably needs Ruben Dias and Josko Gvardiol to continue to gel at the back, and it certainly needs clarity and confidence in goal. But most of all, you feel it needs Haaland’s goals.
After scoring twice in the opening-day win at Wolves, Guardiola said he felt Haaland looked like the player who ripped up the record books in his first season at the Etihad. That is a frightening proposition for the Premier League and for Europe.
Now is the time for Haaland to take a step forward as a leader. He signed that nine-and-a-half-year contract in January and has been added to the team’s leadership group by Guardiola.
"It is trust," said Guardiola. "When one player decides to sign this type of contract, it is because he wants to show how desperate he is to be here.
“I think what happened is that he loves the club, the people he’s around, the Premier League, he loves to be here and I think he visualised that there is no better place he could be right now or the next 10 years I would say.
“The club and team, myself as a manager, we have to create an environment to create a lot of moments where he can intervene where he is unstoppable because there he is the best.”
Guardiola will be desperate to add another Champions League to his own CV. He will know that winning it once at City, while history-making, doesn’t accurately reflect the quality of the teams he has built in the previous decade. He knows time is running out to add to the haul.
Haaland will be desperate to add another. At 25, he has many more years ahead of him and many more chances, but he is hungry for success.
The Champions League has always stirred the romantic in a player who looks so robotic in front of goal. He remembers watching Manchester United beat Chelsea in Moscow as a seven-year-old and becoming transfixed with the idea of one day winning the trophy and celebrating himself.
As if to illustrate the point, Haaland scored a hat-trick on his Champions League debut for RB Salzburg against Genk, but it was what happened on the day of the game that showed how this competition really gets him going.
He was driving around Salzburg, the Champions League anthem on and blasting out of the speakers. He was ready to go.
“A really nice song,” Haaland has since described it as. At the Etihad, he will only ever hear the first bar before it is drowned out by those familiar boos.
But winning it again would be a huge achievement for City, especially at a time when it feels like an era is coming to an end. Or at the very least, this is a team in transition.
When Haaland was close to signing his new contract he spoke to Guardiola and although they didn’t discuss ambitions and what comes next, the City manager has always stated how impressed he has been by the striker’s mindset.
“I didn’t speak to him about his motivation,” he said. “I think it’s winning the next game and scoring goals.
“I don’t have the feeling now he has the contract he will take a nap. I don’t think this will happen.
“He loves to play and he is a huge competitor, and at the same time in good and bad moments, he’s good at forgetting about it immediately, putting it in the back [of his mind], and getting on with the next.”
The next for Haaland will be more goals, more trophies, and just maybe another European title.
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