Erling Braut Haland
Just as the world was getting used to the notion of Kylian Mbappe, who became a World Cup champion and one of the world's dominant strikers at age 19, along came Erling Braut Haland. The Leeds-born Norwegian frontman is now a 19-year-old smarterscout young prospect, and his performances – especially in European competition – have already compelled a raft of top clubs to seek his signature. What makes him so good?
We took a look at his stats in the Austrian Bundesliga using a Premier League standard, and we found that he already had the attacking output of a top Premier League striker (rated 84). He's the epitome of a mobile target man: dribbling, receiving the ball in the box, and shooting more than virtually anyone else who's played in Austria in recent times (rated 90, 94, and 99 respectively). And he takes very high quality shots, with an average chance of scoring estimated at 23%. He's about an average finisher at a Premier League standard, and Premier League goalkeepers are a bit tougher than the ones in Austria. And he's also got roughly average skill in ground duels in possession for the Premier League.
Now, you might say, "Hey, maybe those league adjustments between the Austrian Bundesliga and the Premier League can't quite capture the difference in standard." And that's a perfectly logical reaction to these numbers! So let's look at the same stats from his matches in the Champions League, again adjusted to a (much closer) Premier League standard. These are based on much fewer minutes, but the similarities are startling:
92 attacking output
87 dribbling
77 receiving in the box
74 shooting
24% average chance of scoring
Haland's shot quality is almost exactly the same in the Champions League, and his attacking output actually looks higher, though his activity as a mobile target man comes down a bit. But you know what? His style actually is different on the European stage. Where his frequency of passing toward goal is rated 50 in Austria, it's 98 in the Champions League. Our guess is that tougher back lines in Europe make it tougher for his teammates to reach him in the box, so he becomes more of a creator – and evidently quite a good one.
The other things that are similar between Haland's two leagues are two of the negatives in his play. His ball retention is very low at a Premier League standard (rated 16 in Austria and 20 in the Champions League), because he has a fairly risky style of play – he likes to end moves himself. The overall quality of his defending is also poor (rated 16 in Austria and 14 in the Champions League). His dad, the former defensive midfield stalwart Alf-Inge Haland, might want to have a word about that. Finally, despite measuring 1.91m tall, Haland the younger presents relatively little threat in the air.
So the boy wonder still has a few things to work on, particularly if he wants to play for a hard-pressing club in one of Europe's top five leagues – or for Marcelo Bielsa's Leeds United, to whom he declared his allegiance in 2017. But if we look for players who had a similar style at similar ages in those competitions, the first two names on the list are Lautaro Martinez and Mbappe. That's some nice company to be in. And for pure offensive power, there are few prospects in the world who can match Haland.
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[Photo: Werner100359]
