Championship duo Leeds United and Nottingham Forest are very unlikely to be signing £88m Red Bull Salzburg wonderkid Erling Braut Haaland any time soon.
Erling Braut Haaland is perhaps the most coveted young striker in the world right now with clubs from all over Europe scrapping for his signature.
Unfortunately for Leeds United and Nottingham Forest, a teenager who grew up supporting two of English football’s sleeping giants is now a million miles out of their reach. Haaland is more Champions League than Championship.
At the age of 19, this incredible striker has already scored 23 goals in 17 games for Red Bull Salzburg. Seven of those have come in just four Champions League group stage games with the teen sensation following that opening day hat-trick against Genk with three strikes against Napoli and a tap in away at Liverpool.
Haaland appears to be on a one-way journey to the very top of the European game with any lingering hopes that he could follow in his father’s footsteps at Elland Road or the City Ground fading away fast.
“He’s a Leeds fan and a Nottingham Forest fan, he followed me and that’s what you do in your youth. He was born in Leeds,” Alf-Inge Haaland, who played for both clubs between 1993 and 2000, told Alan Brazil on talkSPORT (6 November, 9am).
“He loves to score goals. He’s got an eye for goal but he’s also strong, he’s tall and he’s fast – which are all good skills to have,”
“At one stage he would like to play in the Premier League but when that’s going to happen I don’t know. It’s a very tough league. At the moment, he’s ahead of the stage that we thought he’d be at.”
According to Tuttosport, any club looking to sign Haaland in January will have to pay a staggering £88 million.
So the only hope Leeds realistically have at this stage is if Marcelo Bielsa’s drags this famous old club back to the Premier League at long last before QSI complete their much-mooted takeover and turn the Whites into Yorkshire’s answer to Paris Saint-Germain.
In reality, however, Haaland isn’t going to be following in his father’s footsteps any time soon.
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