Speaking on the No Tippy Tappy Football Podcast, Duncan Ferguson has dropped something of a bombshell about Erling Haaland.
We all know by now that Haaland is one of, if not the, best striker in world football, as he continues to tear the Premier League apart with Manchester City.
However, in another world, he could’ve been playing for Everton.
Indeed, Ferguson has revealed that Haaland came to Everton for assessment as a young teenager, but the Toffees wouldn’t pay the £2m fee to sign him at that point.
Ferguson also says that he’s pretty sure Leeds had the same option as his father was an ex-Leeds player and would likely have offered his son to his former club at that point.
Haaland’s near miss
Ferguson shared a story about Everton almost signing Haaland.
“What a phenomenal player he is and I’ll tell you a story. Believe it or not he was in at Everton. He was in at Everton because his dad brought him in and they never signed him. He was 15 or 16. The team that he was with wanted a couple of million quid for him and Everton wouldn’t sign him. Nobody knew that and I’ve just told you. I’m pretty sure that if his dad took him to Everton he’d have taken him to Leeds because his dad played for Leeds,” Ferguson said.
Mistake of the century
Every football club has the story of ‘the one that got away’, but this is something else.
Haaland is on-course to be one of the greatest goalscorers of all-time, and it’s fair to say that Leeds and Everton missed out here.
In all honesty, he’d probably have moved on by now if he’d signed all those years ago, but we have to imagine that these two clubs would have had hugely different trajectories if they’d had Haaland in their team at any point.
This may go down as the mistake of the century for both of these clubs.
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