Haaland opens up on crying when missing chances after sitter against Man Utd
Erling Haaland no longer bursts into tears when he misses chances to score.
When he was younger, Haaland revealed he would cry when he missed the target, but these days the Manchester City goal machine takes it in his stride.
On Sunday, despite scoring City's final goal in their 3-1 derby defeat of local rivals Manchester United, Haaland was guilty of what Gary Lineker said “might be the worst miss I've ever seen at this level”.
With United leading 1-0, Phil Foden headed the ball into the path of Haaland just before half-time. With the goal at his mercy, Haaland tried to steer the ball in with his left foot, rather than heading it.
He sent the ball over the bar, those watching inside the stadium, as well as the millions watching around the world, were incredulous at such a glaring miss from the planet's most prolific striker.
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But Haaland, who has 80 goals in 84 games for City, has learned to immediately wipe such missed opportunities from his mind, although he admitted it has not been an easy process.
“It’s been a challenge for me,” said Haaland. “When I was young, I remember I would start crying if we lost and I missed a lot of chances. I’ve been working on it a lot and it’s been a challenge.
“I think we're doing pretty good as a team and that's my main focus, of course. But, yeah, I've been missing, I've missed a lot of chances. I will still keep missing chances, I will still keep on scoring goals, I'll probably miss a big chance in the future as well and people are going to criticise me.
“But what can I do then? Should I think of that? No, just focus on scoring more goals and helping the team. I demand a lot from myself, all my team-mates demand a lot from me and the manager and all the fans. I think it’s something to work on and in the end everything is in here [taps head]. It’s an easy answer but it’s also so difficult.
Erling Haaland missed the target from five yards against Manchester United (Javier Garcia/REX/Shutterstock)“People say I’m good at scoring goals, but I missed the biggest chance in the world ever two days ago. I can also become better at that. I can become a lot better at a lot of things. It’s a mental thing.
“I don’t have any exercises, it’s something I’ve been working naturally on. It’s like with everything in life, if you overthink something it’s not good, if there’s stress in your life, it’s not good.
“My life is mainly about football, so that’s my focus. I have one career, so I try do my best to have the best career possible. My focus is to become the best possible version of myself, so the main thing is the mental part.”
It says everything about Haaland's formidable scoring ability that he has 28 goals this season in all competitions, despite missing two months with a stress fracture of the foot.
Reflecting on his enforced injury lay-off, Haaland said: “It was hard. You get used to something and then suddenly you don’t know what to do. You don’t have to focus on training and all that kind of thing when you can’t play games.”
After winning the Treble in his first season at City, Haaland said he is hungry to repeat that success, dismissing the notion it is hard to motivate himself having won it all.
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“You can think about it in two ways,” said Haaland. “One thing is that I came here and won it all, the other is that I'm 23, I won everything, I got a taste of it, how it is to win everything and how I work is that when I feel this, I want to win it again. Easy as that.”
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