Football is a funny old game.
For so much of this season, Erling Haaland has looked distinctly ordinary. He was the one player you never thought normality would happen to.
He was finally full. Rivals could breathe again, as City’s title challenge faltered. Defenders had, in the ultra-defensive Premier League, become wise to the Norse goalscoring machine’s ways.
We have all been guilty of thinking such. The numbers, it was assumed by this writer in particular, would remain impressive, but the records would not fall at the speed of light like they did before.
What stands those in the pantheon of Premier League footballing greats apart is how they defy the likes of me time and again. The best just find news ways to stay at the very top of the game.
What Haaland needed was a tussle with old foe Virgil van Dijk. The Dutch colossus has never shirked a battle and, more often than not down the years, has had the better of clashes with Haaland.
Haaland’s hat-trick was his 12th for Manchester City (Photo: Reuters)Haaland’s penalty at Anfield earlier this season was his first career goal at Anfield – one of only two top-flight stadiums he had played at without finding the net.
Goals from the spot, however, was about all Haaland could muster since the yips had set in since the turn of the year.
Even as he stroked City in front from the spot on Saturday as Liverpool looked to avoid a third defeat of the season to Pep Guardiola’s transitional side, there was no reason to believe the tide had turned.
A sublime header later, arching his back to guide the ball into the top corner on the stroke of half time to all but end Liverpool’s hopes of getting a result, and the rest of the Premier League watching on was starting to feel rather nauseous.
Liverpool had been the better team for much of the first half. Mohamed Salah, playing his first match since announcing he will be leaving the club in the summer, should have done better from an early chance, while Hugo Ekitike blazed over from a good position.
As has been the case for much of Liverpool’s season, a downturn is never too far away. Van Dijk’s clumsy challenge to gift City a penalty later and the stage was Haaland’s.
Perhaps he knew something everyone else didn’t, given he had donated his box and Tunnel Club table to charity for Liverpool’s visit, raising several thousand pounds while bringing some fans from his hometown of Bryne the chance to attend a match. And witness his bludgeoning of Van Dijk firsthand.
The irresistible movement was back. Darting here, ducking there. The header for the second one of those you can’t teach, his throwing of Van Dijk, to make space for City’s fourth, unstoppable. The ball going in off the underside of the crossbar being the perfect way to seal a hat-trick.
As Rayan Cherki looks more at home by the week, Antoine Semenyo assimilates to life in the fast lane and Jeremy Doku continues to back up the fleet of foot with an end product, Haaland is perfectly position to finish the season on full throttle. To collective gulps from all around.
A first treble for City since August 2024, to seal an eighth successive FA Cup semi-final for the only man in the room with a more awe-inspiring relentlessness than Haaland – Guardiola.
That is 46 goals in 50 games for club and country. Had he continued on the trajectory he started on this term, he’d be lapping his peers. The scary thing is, there is even perhaps more to come. Back to the drawing board for everyone else.
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