Erling Haaland is breaking all sorts of records at his new club, Manchester City.
His pace, skill, agility and strength have been on full display as the forward has feasted on defences this season, scoring 19 times in 12 outings thus far.
In the PL alone, Haaland has reached 14 goals in just 8 games.
For reference, last year’s Golden Boot, shared by Son Heung-Min and Mohamed Salah, was won with 23 goals.
The big City striker has 30 games to score 10 and surpass this total. Pretty achievable given his current form.
Netting goals is not a new feeling for this generational phenomenon. Haaland scored 86 goals in 89 games, almost one goal a game, during his time at Dortmund.
The ease with which the youngster was dominating in Bundesliga convinced clubs around the world to give this kid for Norway a try.
Many clubs lined up but Man City was the eventual destination for the player, paying his £51.2 million release clause.
Considering the sky-high fees involved in transfers, this sum was very cheap for the oil-rich club.
Kylian Mbappe’s move to Real Madrid, had it been successful, would have been worth multi-fold of the Haaland fees.
What City saved in transfer fees, it made up for in Haaland’s wages.
The 22-year-old is being paid a base salary of £375,000 a week, as per TalkSport, just a tad bit lesser than the highest earner at the club Kevin de Bruyne, who is on £400,000 a week.
This is already close to three times the £132,000-a-week wage he was reportedly earning at Dortmund.
But a new exclusive by Mike Keegan of Mail Sports has revealed that the overall wage structure is even more ludicrous than we initially thought.
While the base salary of the striker is in line with other top earners, Haaland’s contract has clauses and bonuses that make his overall take-home salary close to a whopping £900,000 a week!
This blows out of the water the league’s current highest earner, which is Cristiano Ronaldo, at around £515,000 a week.
The relatively straightforward bonuses that the player will earn puts him in line to earn more than £45m in wages this year.
That is a massive amount of money.
At only 22, the player will earn enough to not worry about finances for a long long time and can have a playing career chasing his dreams and not pay cheques.
But what can be the possible reason for paying through the roof for Erling?
Well, one obvious explanation is fighting off competition.
With top clubs falling over themselves for Haaland’s signature in the summer gone by, Man City could flex their financial muscle and blow everyone out of the water.
Such a huge contract also means that the player will be motivated to stay at the club longer.
Any new club vying to take Haaland off City might have to match his salary, which is going to be no easy feat.
One thing we know for sure is that City officials will not be regretting paying through their noses for the player.
A blistering start to life and how easily the player has settled in Pep’s side means City’s investment is bearing fruit and is worth every penny.
