Espen Undheim smiles as he recalls the early training sessions where he first met Erling Haaland. The superstar striker wasn’t anywhere near the physical specimen he is today, but his former coach remembers seeing flashes of potential in the “skinny” kid, who had such a burning passion for the sport.
The pair first met at Bryne FK, a soccer club in the southern tip of Norway. Undheim was and still is a youth coach for the team and Haaland, then around 8, was one of the thousands of local kids eager to learn the game.
“What was special with him was that he was always looking to score, even if he wasn’t in a position where he could, he moved and tried to be in situations where he could score goals,” Undheim tells CNN Sports.
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“And when he scored goals, he celebrated them a lot, running all over the pitch. Even as a kid, I could see that he had an intuition for scoring.”
It might not have seemed probable at the time, but that knack for goalscoring would later fire Haaland to the very top of soccer, where he’s now one of the best players on the planet.
His record simply speaks for itself. In his four seasons at Manchester City, Haaland has been the Premier League’s top scorer on three occasions. It also took him just 111 league matches to score 100 goals in the division, the fastest player ever to reach the milestone.
The 25-year-old has also fired Norway to this summer’s World Cup – the first time his nation has qualified for the tournament since 1998 – and is expected to shine on the biggest stage of all.
But before the fame and multi-million dollar deals, Haaland was just like all the other kids growing up in his small Norwegian town.
Finding his passion
Undheim remembers how Haaland and his friends would practically live on an indoor soccer pitch in the town. If he wasn’t eating, sleeping or at school, he could be found there, kicking a ball around with a group of boys a year older than him.
He then started training three times a week after school, in a program run by Undheim. After a couple years, he was moved into the Bryne youth team.
“At that time, he was nearly only left-footed,” Undheim said. “So he had to work a lot on his right foot to become better.”
“But it was all about his mentality. If he didn’t get the ball, he was very angry at his teammates, and if he didn’t score goals in obvious situations, he was also very angry at himself. That was special about him.”
That anger is still very much part of his game today. Even when winning the FA Cup for his club this season, Haaland was left furious that a teammate hadn’t passed him the ball in the final attack of the game. It’s that drive and desire that have helped him become the goal machine he is today.
But what’s important is Haaland knows how to turn that edge on and off – using it to help the team, not as a destructive force.
Where that mentality comes from isn’t exactly clear, but there have been two major influences, according to his former coach.
First, Undheim said Haaland’s childhood environment in Byrne, a proud agricultural community, helped him develop toughness. Second, he was getting sound advice from his father, Alf-Inge Haaland, who also played professional soccer for Manchester City.
But, despite his famous father, Undheim says Haaland didn’t have any extra pressure on his shoulders. As a kid, he played just for the enjoyment.
“He was a typical town boy,” Undheim says, smiling. “He was funny. He was always answering very fast. Before matches and after matches, he liked to be funny.
“When I hear interviews with him now, I can still say this is the boy I know from Byrne … he hasn’t changed.”
Physical development
But things began to get a little more serious as he started rising through the ranks. By 15, he was already playing for the Byrne under-18 team and was attracting the attention of other clubs in Norway.
In 2017, he was then signed by Molde, one of the biggest clubs in the country. After initially playing for the reserves, he quickly burst into the first team with a flurry of goals that attracted the attention of some of the biggest clubs in Europe.
It was around this time that Haaland was also catching the attention of the national team. Leif Gunnar Smerud is currently the assistant manager at NWSL team Angel City. But the 49-year-old started his coaching career back in his home country of Norway.
In a varied career, which also saw him work as a psychologist, Smerud was a national youth coach and took charge of the under-18s and under-21s, as well as spells as both the men’s and women’s senior team coach.
During his time with Norway, he recalls a small buzz about a young player named Erling, but tells CNN Sports that it wasn’t anything too different from normal, at least at the start.
“I saw him quite early,” he said. “We have these talent camps in Norway for the 14 and 15-year-old players.
“You could see that he had a passion about him. We looked for players who really had the passion, almost more than the talent, and he had that bit. He loved football and you could see that.
“But his development was interesting, and really took off at a later stage. He was good, of course, but he wasn’t like the one that we were all waiting for.”
It was around this time that Haaland began to fully develop physically. For years, he would have to find different ways to get past defenders, often coming up against opponents stronger than he was.
In his teens, though, Haaland started to grow and bulk out. It’s a physicality he has continued to develop to a point where he can now bully defenders with his sheer size and speed.
Smerud says that not having that physical advantage as a child was beneficial to his overall development.
“I think it really helps because players that don’t have too much size when they are kids, they have to be smart,” he said. “If you are very big when you are young and you have the physical advantage, then you can sometimes get into bad habits and you are used to things working just because you’re big.
“(Haaland) didn’t have that, so he had to work on his timing and his positioning, movement and technique, all of these things. So I think it actually helped him.
“I also think it helps him to have the physique he does now, because it is a physical game at the top level.”
Nine goals in one game
Haaland would represent his country at various age groups, but he really made a name for himself at the Under-20 World Cup in 2019.
Despite Norway being eliminated after the group stage, Haaland was the tournament’s top scorer – with all nine of his goals coming in a 12-0 thrashing of Honduras.
Smerud was the under-21 coach at the time but said Haaland’s performances at the tournament saw him fast-tracked straight into the senior national team.
It was also at this time that he signed for Austrian side RB Salzburg, where Haaland continued to rise to the occasion.
He scored 28 times in 22 games in his first season in Austria, including eight goals in six Champions League matches. It was form that put him on the radar of the biggest clubs in Europe, notably Manchester United.
But it was German powerhouse Borussia Dortmund that won the race to sign the youngster, completing a transfer worth over $20 million in 2019. While in the Bundesliga, Haaland found frightening form and quickly became one of the most sought-after players in world soccer.
A move to City in 2022 and a trophy-laden four seasons have followed but those who knew him before can still see the little boy from Bryne.
“I think his greatest strength is that he is the same guy. He is a good teammate, he’s a good human being, and I don’t think anything can change that,” Smerud says.
“The dangers of success will always be there, but I would be very surprised if he doesn’t deal with that well. He is from a part of the country where the people will tell him if he’s changing too much. He loves his hometown, he loves the people there, and if he loses their respect, I don’t think anything else matters more to him.”
And while Haaland has already captured the imagination of the soccer world, he could become an even bigger star if he’s able to perform at this summer’s World Cup.
Norway faces a tough group alongside France, Senegal and Iraq, but it has enough talent to push for a place in the knockout stages.
The Norwegians will play Iraq in their first group game on June 16, with Haaland set to make his World Cup debut.
Whatever happens, he’ll have the support of his hometown of Bryne. Undheim says there are plans to invite 1,000 youth players to the indoor pitch that Haaland used to play on to watch Norway play France.
“We are very proud of him. In our indoor arena we have a painting of him which is 50 meters high and 15 meters wide,” Undheim says.
“He is very, very popular, of course and people are looking forward to seeing him the World Cup.”
