Erling Haaland's record-breaking debut season at Manchester City will have come as no surprise to those who saw the striker make a name for himself in his native Norway.
Haaland finished his first Premier League campaign with 36 goals in 35 league games, a record for the competition. When cups are included, the former Borussia Dortmund striker has an even more impressive 52, with a chance to add to the tally in the finals of the FA Cup and Champions League.
The 22-year-old has six hat-tricks this season, including a five-goal haul against RB Leipzig in the Champions League round of 16. However, nothing compares to the nine he hit in one game for Norway at the Under-20 World Cup in 2019.
Norway were handed a tricky draw for the tournament, battling it out with Uruguay and New Zealand in an effort to finish above underdogs Honduras. Despite having a talent-packed squad, with Haaland joined by fellow future internationals including Leo Ostigard and Jens Petter Hauge, two defeats meant even victory over Honduras might not be enough to progress.
With only the top four third-placed teams progressing Norway had to win big and hope. Haaland got the memo, scoring nine times in a record-breaking 12-0 win, but Norway still headed home.
It was certainly one way for the striker, at the time about to start his first full season with Red Bull Salzburg, to announce himself. Back at home, however, his talent was hardly a secret, even if the means of expressing it might have been a little unconventional.
Will anyone ever better Haaland's nine goals in one Under-20 World Cup game? Have your say in the comments section
"Haaland should definitely become a world-class striker," Dagbladet journalist Oyvind Godo told ESPN FC in 2018, a few months before the striker moved to Austria from Molde. "He is strong as a bear and fast as a horse. He is a killer; a goal machine."
At the time, Norway's other great hope, Martin Odegaard, was struggling to break through at Real Madrid after a much-publicised move of his own. The midfielder has now revived his career at Arsenal, but Godo anticipated Haaland going on to bigger and better things than his compatriot
"He has the physics and the end product that Odegaard is missing," he added. "The choice of Salzburg is very good, because he is going to be an important player there from the very beginning. It is important to play a lot at his age."
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Haaland's boss at Molde, had a more straightforward comparison. The ex-striker would go on to manage Romelu Lukaku at Manchester United and saw similarities between the pair of physically imposing strikers with powerful left feet.
"He will be a top player for sure," Solskjaer said a few months before the Salzburg move was announced. "He reminds me of Romelu Lukaku.
"We have said no [to offers] in the past, and there are big clubs," he explained at the time. "They are Champions League winners."
Solskjaer would later confirm that United had the chance to sign Haaland for just £4m when he was at Molde. "I called United about six months before I took over and told them that I’d got this striker that we had, but they didn’t listen," he told The Sun. "I asked for £4million for Haaland, but they didn’t sign him."
By the time he was banging in nine against Honduras, Haaland's price had gone up considerably. Borussia Dortmund forked out over a reported €20m in January 2020 after he scored 28 times in just 22 games in Austria, and the German side more than doubled their money last summer when selling him to Manchester City.
Despite Norway's early exit, Haaland finished the tournament as top scorer... with all his goals coming in one match. Only two players have ever scored more than nine in a single edition of the tournament, while other previous winners of the top scorer award include Argentina stars Lionel Messi and Sergio Aguero.
“The thing that I recall most from that game is that he was quite annoyed he hadn’t scored a tenth goal!” Paco Johansen, Norway's under-20 boss at the time, would later tell Manchester City. "I remember in the dressing room he was holding up nine fingers and he was quite annoyed he couldn’t hold up ten!
"He had 10 chances and scored nine of them that evening as well as having one goal disallowed, but he was still frustrated he hadn’t managed double figures, which tells you a little bit about Erling Haaland!"
Haaland didn't stop there, of course. He now has 21 goals in 23 senior Norway appearances, as well as more than 200 club goals before his 23rd birthday. And those bear and horse comparisons? Not too far wide of the mark.
