Should Chelsea really sign Erling Haaland?
https://theathletic.com/2638837/2021/06/09/should-Chelsea-really-sign-erling-haaland/
For the second summer in a row, Chelsea are hoping to get a free run at a Bundesliga superstar coveted across Europe.
Their signing of Kai Havertz for an initial £62 million from Bayer Leverkusen last September took time to bear fruit but eventually received the ultimate validation with his Champions League final-winning goal against Manchester City 10 days ago.
Erling Haaland would likely cost more than twice that amount to prise from Borussia Dortmund in this summer window but the strength of the desire to bring the striker to Stamford Bridge makes this feel almost like a major trophy hunt in itself.
Dortmund have given no indication that they are prepared to sell Haaland and are under no obligation to do so, having secured Champions League qualification with a strong finish to the Bundesliga season, but recent history has taught us that Roman Abramovich is as determined an owner as you can find in football when he really wants a player and Chelsea, wearing the Kings of Europe crown for the first time in nine years, are a particularly attractive proposition for transfer targets right now.
Coach Thomas Tuchel is also said to be huge fan of the player and will surely play his part in any recruitment pitch, as predecessor Frank Lampard did with Havertz.
Haaland’s agent Mino Raiola made clear his eagerness to explore the market for his client in typically unsubtle fashion in April, travelling very publicly across Europe with the player’s former footballer father Alf-Inge to meet with several of Europe’s elite clubs. The most severe pressure on Dortmund to sell now might well come from close to home in the coming weeks and if it coincides with a truly gargantuan offer from Chelsea, or another leading suitor, there will be an agonising decision to make.
As a pure statement of intent, signing Haaland might be the single most powerful move Abramovich has made in 18 years as Chelsea owner but it would be fascinating well beyond that.
His arrival would require Tuchel to significantly evolve a team that just lifted the European Cup in the attacking third, as well as posing several broader strategic questions for the club off the pitch.
The ripple effects of what would be the biggest transfer in Chelsea’s history could be vast.
“Two or three could be very, very good,” Tuchel said when asked about possible signings in the wake of Chelsea’s triumph over City in Porto. “It’s a constant thing to never deny change; that you always bring new energy, new guys who question the old beliefs, who challenge everybody in the training and in matches, so I think it’s a good thing.
“We don’t need another seven and another complete turnover because it’s also our job to keep on improving, because we have still a young squad and it’s not about stealing from them the chance to prove it again, that they are capable of growing and evolving. But we have some ideas, of course, to make the group stronger, and I think this can always be a positive thing to challenge all of us.”
On the surface, it’s a match made in heaven.
Chelsea have been a team crying out for an elite No 9 ever since Diego Costa refused to come back from Brazil in the summer of 2017 and one crying out for any kind of No 9 at all since Tuchel decided Tammy Abraham wasn’t part of his plans, and that an almost 35-year-old Olivier Giroud was best deployed as an impact substitute. In the four months and 30 matches across all competitions since the German replaced Lampard, Chelsea averaged a paltry 1.3 goals per game.
Haaland is as pure a No 9 as they come; as well as scoring an astonishing 41 goals in 41 appearances for Dortmund across all competitions last season, his statistical profile looks like late-career Cristiano Ronaldo reborn in the body of a 20-year-old Norse demigod.
The extent to which his contributions within a football match are focused on converting chances in the opposition penalty area is startling, illustrated by the smarterscout chart below.
For those unfamiliar, smarterscout is a site that gives players a rating from zero to 99 in a series of performance metrics relating to either how often they do a given stylistic action or how effective they are at them compared with others who play in their position.
Dortmund required Haaland to do very little in the way of either pressing or tracking back when they were out of possession, and while he did drop deeper to hold up the ball and bring others into play at times, he very rarely passed it forwards to play in overlapping wingers or midfield runners. He was almost exclusively a finisher rather than an initiator of moves, and there also weren’t many examples of him using his powerful 6ft 4in frame to threaten defences in the air, though that was primarily due to Dortmund’s ground-bound style.
You can see in this graphic that in his Premier League minutes as a No 9, Timo Werner was much more involved in Chelsea’s build-up play than Haaland was at Dortmund, as well as being a more frequent ball carrier.
And in this graphic, you can see that in his limited minutes playing as a false nine in the Premier League, Havertz was far more active and impactful as a defensive presence.
Assuming that Tuchel sticks with this season’s 3-4-2-1 system or, more broadly, with a three-man attack, Haaland would need to adapt his game to perform all the duties of a No 9 in his new team.
Chelsea’s stifling defence in the final four months of last season was founded in no small part on sharp, sophisticated pressing from the front which limited teams’ opportunities to launch dangerous counter-attacks, and pinned them back in their own defensive third. All of Tuchel’s forwards worked very hard out of possession, to the extent that the effort expended, at times, appeared to take its toll on their decision-making once they won the ball back.
Haaland would need to be prepared to burn some of the energy he previously conserved for attacking situations if a Chelsea he was part of were to build on the identity that has made them European champions under Tuchel. The good news on that front is there is no physical reason why he would not be able to do his part in this; he is an accomplished athlete with the ability to cover short, medium or long distances at explosive speed at any stage of a game. It would simply be a question of his willingness to do so.
Which raises another question: How coachable is Haaland?
All elite goalscorers can count on an unshakeable bedrock of confidence but it requires a special type of arrogance to impact matches at the highest level as frequently as Haaland does at such a young age. He has cited fellow Scandinavian, and Raiola client, Zlatan Ibrahimovic as an inspiration and it seems from the way he carries himself on the pitch, and in interviews, that he is modelling elements of his persona on the Swede, too.
Having already ascended to the level of individual superstardom, it’s reasonable to wonder how readily he would subject himself to a coach as demanding as Tuchel. Neymar and Kylian Mbappe never totally did so in his 18 months at Paris Saint-Germain, instead requiring Tuchel to adapt his methods to them, and, as a result, PSG never appeared quite as tactically cohesive or coherent as Chelsea did last season in the Champions League. With his next transfer, Haaland will assume similar status, if he hasn’t done so already.
But such doubts are probably unfair. Haaland has always appeared a popular figure with team-mates at both club and international level, and the sheer speed of his improvement to world-class level is indicative of a single-minded, relentless determination to realise every drop of his vast potential.
Players as dedicated and diligent as he is generally relish the chance to work with and learn from the brightest football minds. The mere fact Tuchel is such a big fan also indicates that he does not anticipate this problem.
Regardless of whether or not he acts like a superstar, Haaland will be paid like one at his next club.
Reports in Spain around the time of those April meetings with Barcelona and Real Madrid — immediately branded “fake news” by Raiola — claimed the striker would demand a basic salary package that equated to £600,000 a week, with added costs including £17 million commissions for his agent and his father as part of the deal.
The highest earner in the Chelsea squad currently is N’Golo Kante, on £290,000 a week. If those numbers are even close to accurate, Haaland would utterly shatter Chelsea’s existing wage structure. That is unlikely to bother the fans who would simply be ecstatic at his arrival, but it carries the potential to cause problems in a dressing room that was partying with the Champions League trophy less than a fortnight ago.
The notion of a 20-year-old — even an extraordinary 20-year-old — earning more than double the money of any of his more experienced and successful new team-mates could be jarring.
Haaland scored 41 goals in 41 games for Borussia Dortmund last season (Photo: Matthias Hangst/Getty Images)
Contract disparities of that size tend to have consequences.
Barcelona are on the brink of bankruptcy not because of the historically huge contract they gave to Lionel Messi in the summer of 2017, but because of the vastly inflated contracts they subsequently felt compelled to give to a number of his less talented team-mates. Real Madrid fell into a similar trap in Cristiano Ronaldo’s later years. Chelsea’s £283 million wage bill in their most recent set of published accounts represented 70 per cent of turnover, and this is still going to be a transfer market less than conducive to offloading the high earning first-teamers or loanees not in Tuchel’s plans.
Handing out what would be by far the most lucrative player contract in club history is not necessarily an automatic decision, even if Abramovich can undoubtedly afford it.
All the indications are that Chelsea and Tuchel would jump at the chance to sign Haaland this summer and despite the considerations listed above, it’s easy to see why. In an era of football that seems to be moving away from specialist No 9s, he is a No 9 poised to defy the trend and define the position for the next decade. What he has done already is extraordinary, and the thought that he might still have several new levels to reach when surrounded by better team-mates is utterly terrifying.
In some ways, the fear of not signing Haaland should be just as much of an incentive to pursue him as what he could bring to your team. Chelsea, like every other club in the conversation, know that if they miss out this summer or next, they’ll see him go to a Premier League or Champions League rival who will be able to count upon his relentless cascade of goals for years to come. They also know there are no guarantees that another goalscorer of Haaland’s calibre will become available during this Tuchel coaching cycle.
His presence at Stamford Bridge would present a challenge to Werner and an adjustment for Havertz, both only signed last summer, along with potentially fewer minutes in the forward line to satisfy Christian Pulisic, Hakim Ziyech and Callum Hudson-Odoi. Tuchel and Chelsea would also be buying into the circus that inevitably accompanies Raiola, including the possibility that he or Haaland might attempt to force another extravagant transfer before the end of his first contract.
But none of these are reasons to say no. Haaland is simply too good, too unique and too clearly what this Chelsea team needs to build on their Champions League success with a Premier League title challenge next season.
Everything else falls into the bracket of “good problems to have”.
