"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." Espen Undheim said that about an eight-year-old. The same kid now has seven World Cup goals, is level with Mbappé and Messi in the Golden Boot race, and just fired Norway to a Round of 16 win over Brazil.
Undheim coached Haaland at Bryne FK, a club in the southern tip of Norway, where a skinny, left-footed boy would spend every spare hour on the indoor pitch — not because anyone pushed him, but because he couldn't stay away. Three training sessions a week after school. Games against kids a year older than him. A fury directed at teammates who didn't pass and at himself when he wasted a chance.
That anger hasn't left him. This season, winning the FA Cup with City, Haaland was reportedly furious that he didn't receive a pass in the game's final attack. The difference between then and now is just the stage.
Late bloomer, early instincts
Leif Gunnar Smerud, a former Norway youth coach, saw Haaland at national talent camps when he was 14 or 15. His honest assessment? "He was good, of course, but he wasn't like the one that we were all waiting for."
That's worth sitting with. The player who reached 100 Premier League goals in just 111 matches — the fastest ever — wasn't the obvious standout at 14. He was late developing physically, which Smerud now believes was a hidden advantage.
"Players that don't have too much size when they are kids, they have to be smart," Smerud explained. "He had to work on his timing and his positioning, movement and technique. So I think it actually helped him."
When the size eventually came, it landed on a player who already knew how to move without it. That combination — elite positioning built before elite physicality — is a rare thing.
The moment everything changed
The real turning point came at the 2019 Under-20 World Cup. Norway went out in the group stage. Haaland didn't care — he scored nine goals in a single game, a 12-0 demolition of Honduras, and finished as the tournament's top scorer. He was fast-tracked into the senior squad almost immediately.
From there the timeline moves fast: RB Salzburg (28 goals in 22 games, eight in six Champions League matches), Borussia Dortmund (over $20 million, Bundesliga stardom), Manchester City in 2022. Three Premier League Golden Boots in four seasons.
At this World Cup, Norway's odds of going deep are shifting by the game. A striker averaging nearly a goal per match, peaking at 25, drawing level with Messi and Mbappé in the Golden Boot standings — any bookmaker pricing up the tournament has a serious variable to account for.
Back in Bryne, around 1,000 youth players crammed into that same indoor arena to watch Norway's last group game. On the wall outside: a painting of Haaland, 50 metres high, 15 metres wide.
"He hasn't changed," Undheim says. The records suggest otherwise. The man who knew him first would disagree.
