How Erling Haaland’s summer of yachting and wood-chopping led to Man City goal-machine’s lightning-quick start to the Premier League season

Haaland got to enjoy the rarest thing for elite footballers in 2024 – an extended break. Thirty-four days, to be precise, 10 days longer than he had previously enjoyed ever since he was 17. He got an extra week on top of that between the FA Cup final and Norway’s international friendlies in June, too, in which he returned home.

Haaland’s reboot began in Marbella, where he owns property, and he was seen DJing at the Playa Padre beach club. It was not all peaceful though, as he was caught up in a separate beach club during a raid by armed police.

He was able to get back in the holiday vibe when he, his girlfriend Isabel Haugseng Johansen, family and friends took out a luxury yacht and sailed from Saint-Tropez in France towards the picturesque island of Capri off the coast of Naples. According to the Daily Mail, the yacht, cost €100,000 (£84,000/$110,000) per week to rent and had a jet ski, paddle boards and diving equipment on board.

Haaland may love the sun and beaches like most footballers, but he is also firmly in touch with his roots. That is why he then went back to Norway for the final stretch of his extended break, and he visited the mountain district of Voss, known for its white-water rafting and hiking, and Haaland relaxed by the lake, meditating on the rocks.

He also indulged in another of his passions: eating. He devoured local food such as raspeballs – potato dumplings with meat – and kjottkaker, Norwegian meatballs.

He also returned to his hometown of Bryne. Even when he was well on his way to superstardom, Haaland was known to help his farming neighbours out by milking the cows, and this summer he got his hands dirty again, helping his father Alfe-Inge chop wood.

He may have blamed the wood chopping for the back pain he felt when he reported back to City’s pre-season training, but the key thing about Haaland’s break and the secret to his record-breaking start to the campaign is the mental reset he was allowed to have.

Even when he had breaks last year, Haaland did promotional work with Dolce & Gabbana and EAFC. This summer, by contrast, he was able to switch off completely. There is a small irony in the fact that he was only allowed to have the long break due to Norway’s failure to qualify for the Euros, and that was not lost on him when he spoke during a pre-season press conference in New York.

“Yeah, of course I would love to play in the Euros and hopefully one day I will, but I had my longest break since 2017 so that was nice,” he said. “My body is fully rested, and I feel ready…. it felt amazing. I needed it. I was quite tired. It’s going to be a long season this year.”

Haaland was not wrong. He scored five goals in four games in pre-season and has been even more deadly since the campaign properly begun. He bullied Marc Cucurella to score the first goal of City’s opening day win at Chelsea and then tore through the entire teams of Ipswich and West Ham, scoring hat-tricks in consecutive Premier League matches for the second time in three seasons.

Haaland’s three-goal salvo at the London Stadium took him on to eight Premier League hat-tricks in just 69 matches. That’s more trebles than Wayne Rooney, the league’s third-top scorer of all time, managed in 491 games.

He has as many hat-tricks as second-top scorer Harry Kane struck in 320 games and as many as both Thierry Henry (258) and Michael Owen (326). Only Robbie Fowler (on nine trebles), all-time scorer Alan Shearer (10) and Sergio Aguero (12) have more hat-tricks than the Norwegian. But at Haaland’s current rate of a treble every 8.6 games, he could feasibly catch Aguero by the end of this season.

Haaland began life at City breaking records for fun, scoring 15 times in his first nine league games and finishing the campaign with 36 goals, blitzing Shearer and Andy Cole’s 28-year-long record tally of 34 strikes in one campaign.

He took the Golden Boot again last season, but Haaland’s 28 goals felt ever so slightly underwhelming, even if he did miss two months with a foot injury. The strain of firing on all fronts while winning the treble might have taken its toll.

There were goal feasts, sure; a hat-trick against Fulham, four goals against Wolves and five against Luton Town in the FA Cup. But there was also no shortage of blunt displays, as Haaland drew blanks in both games against title rivals Arsenal, as well as against Real Madrid and in the FA Cup final defeat by Manchester United.

He has started this campaign ruthlessly, and it feels different to both last season and even that terrifyingly good debut campaign. Guardiola said after the opening day win at Chelsea: “I had a feeling that he feels better than last season at this stage. After the treble, he felt tired.”

And after the hat-trick against West Ham, the Catalan went into more detail, explaining that Haaland was able to work on different areas of his game that he was not able to last season.

“He’s playing much better in everything. The details, he stays 20 minutes or half-an-hour after training sessions,” Guardiola said. “Last season not even once was he there because he didn’t feel good – tired, niggles.”

Guardiola is known as one of the most demanding coaches in the world and he has not been shy of giving Haaland advice or asking him to contribute more to City’s all-round play. But in this form, he admitted there was nothing he could really say to his No.9.

“You have to let him do what he wants,” he said. “Today is one of the games where he has played the best in all situations. He’s unstoppable. There’s no central defender, not even with a gun, to stop him.”

Brentford have been warned, then, even if they have fared quite well against the Norwegian in the past. Haaland has scored just once in three games against the Bees, but this time he is armed with the one thing he had been missing in previous seasons: a proper rest.