Erling Haaland wants to go down in Manchester City’s history books as they pursue the treble. As he accepted the Footballer of the Year award from the Football Writers’ Association in London last night, the striker stated that his attention was on City’s championship game.
Following his £51 million signing from Borussia Dortmund last summer, Haaland has scored 52 goals in 51 games for City, with the Sunday Premier League finale at Brentford and the two finals still this season.
On June 10, City will play Inter Milan in the Champions League final in Istanbul, a week after they take on Manchester United in the FA Cup final after winning the Premier League. They want to achieve like their United team did in 1999.
Even if we won the Premier League, we must maintain our focus for the remaining two finals, according to Haaland.
“We must maintain our concentration if we are to succeed in the upcoming finals. I’ll exert every effort to do well in the finals and, ideally, win both.
Being favourites (against Inter Milan) is a positive thing because it shows that we have qualities. We should approach the game in our own style, play our brand of football, and then we’ll see who prevails.
75 years after Sir Stanley Matthews won the inaugural trophy, Haaland won the FWA award by garnering 82% of the votes, beating out Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard.
He continued, “I feel good, it’s a special moment,” to the FWA. “I anticipated doing good things, but I didn’t anticipate doing this.”
With three games left, Manchester City secured a third consecutive championship, having once trailed Arsenal by eight points. He broke the record for the most Premier League goals in a season with 36.
To be honest, it really just comes down to taking each game as it comes and concentrating on what we can control, according to the 22-year-old.
“I dislike concentrating on the past or the future. I prefer to live in the present and take each game as it comes; we perfectly followed Pep Guardiola’s instructions when he said we would do so.
“We were focused, and we succeeded in achieving our goals. At the end of the day, it’s unbelievable what we accomplished after falling behind the entire season. It was incredible and felt incredible.
