John Stones was the last Manchester City player to leave the Etihad Stadium, wrapping up media obligations a couple of hours after Erling Haaland had laid waste to RB Leipzig’s Champions League hopes.
Haaland scored five in a 7-0 win, equalling the single-game Champions League competition record shared by Lionel Messi and Luiz Adriano and doing so before Pep Guardiola substituted him in the 63rd minute to rest up for the battles ahead.
Stones was wide-eyed when discussing his teammate’s latest astonishing feat, never too far away from chuckling in bafflement. It was put to the England defender that Haaland is only so hungry for goals in games because Stones shackles him so effectively in training.
“I’d like to think so… let’s go with that,” Stones said with a telling eye-roll.
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Nathan Ake — Stones' colleague in a City backline that has quietly rediscovered its robust edge at a handy time, recording a fourth consecutive clean sheet in the Leipzig mauling — was a little more forthcoming over the daily struggles on the City Football Academy pitches.
“He’s a machine,” he said. “It’s very difficult [to stop him]. He’s a very strong player. He’s got the skills with the ball and he’s a great finisher.”
Erling Haaland stats: How many Man City goals has he scored?
Haaland’s fifth hat-trick of the season moved him to 39 goals for the campaign for Man City, breaking the club’s all-time single-season record of 38 that was set by Tommy Johnson in 1928/29.
A season earlier, Everton great Dixie Dean scored 63 in all competitions — an astonishing record that still stands above all else in English football. City will discover their Champions League quarterfinal opponents on Friday and play Burnley at the same stage of the FA Cup on Saturday.
If Guardiola’s side go the distance in those competitions, they will play 19 more games this season: 11 in the Premier League, three in the FA Cup and five in the Champions League. They could of course play extra time in any relevant knockout fixtures, too.
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At his current rate, a half-century for Haaland feels inevitable. Dean’s otherworldly mark, from times when defences were grappling unsuccessfully with the updated offside rule and football was still a decade away from being televised, is unbelievably still just about on the table.
Nevertheless, the man himself isn’t entirely satisfied.
“I’m really proud to score five goals. I love the feeling of scoring goals and I love winning. When I score one goal, I would love to get the feeling again — that’s how my head is,” Haaland said.
“I think I could have had more and that’s a fact. If you go through the whole game, you can see that.”
Did Erling Haaland score nine goals in one game?
Here, Haaland has a point. When the Leipzig game was 0-0 he sprung onto Ake’s raking pass and had a prodded effort saved by Janis Blaswich. The embattled visiting goalkeeper also beat away an effort at his near post after Jack Grealish slotted Haaland into the Leipzig box, briefly prolonging his hat-trick bid.
The 22-year-old could eventually bask in a history-making night in the Champions League, where he blasted beyond 30 goals in the competition at a younger age than anyone in history, beating Kylian Mbappe by 116 days.
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“Yes, at this level [it’s the best game of my career] but I scored nine goals in one game — that was also a good game,” he said, referring to his evisceration of Honduras at the 2019 FIFA U-20 World Cup, a game that Norway won 12-0.
Less than four years later, a hunger that borders on obsession is easy to spot for his dressing-room colleagues.
“He does everything off the pitch right and to make sure he is able to play every three days and perform at the highest level — treatment every day and always coming early and leaving late to be treated really well,” Ake said.
“He does everything well. He’s a top guy and we just have to keep going now. If he continues like this, no one is going to stop him.”
What did Jack Grealish call Erling Haaland?
Stones had already forgotten exactly what he scribbled on Haaland’s latest hat-trick ball — aside from it being “a nice, funny message” — but revealed Grealish had come up with a new nickname for the No.9 after an arch goal-poaching display.
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“He’s an incredible player and I just think he’s going from strength to strength,” he said. “He’s an even better person for me, which makes it even better. [You can see] how happy everyone is for him, how we celebrate our goals. I’m just so pleased for him.
“Erling is in the right spot at the right time — an ‘absolute ball magnet’, I think Jack was calling him in the dressing room after.”
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Haaland has not disclosed any individual goal target for the season to his teammates, with Stones saying that’s not in his nature. But is this the start of an era of prolific record-shredding to match that which Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo accomplished over the previous decade?
“How do I go about this without putting pressure on Erling?” Stones pondered, before realising he didn’t have to be so sparing.
“He’d probably thrive off it. I believe he really could do what he wants, just from his hunger and his attitude and his professionalism. I’d love to see him do it, definitely.”