Erling Haaland is scoring at a pace that’s put him alongside the tournament’s most talked-about names. He’s found the net 7 times in 4 matches so far, and his profile has grown fast as the tournament’s gone on. Attention off the pitch has followed just as consistently, but this week it crossed into his personal space. And Haaland responded in his own way.
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“Erling Haaland caught someone making a video of him from his hotel balcony,” The Touchline shared a Snapchat story of Haaland.
Haaland shared a photo he’d taken, showing a man watching him from the opposite hotel balcony. “Hey you!” Haaland captioned it.
This kind of attention has followed the Manchester City striker all tournament, driven by his social media presence, his on-pitch “walking” tactic, the fan-led “Viking Row” celebrations, and his meme popularity. And unlike a lot of athletes, Haaland runs his own accounts, posting everything from his pre-match meals and Katz’s Deli pastrami to videos of himself trying out Southern American accents. That sort of engagement keeps fan interest high.
For reference, the first week of July witnessed searches for “Haaland” enter the UK’s top-10 TikTok searches. That’s a 300% increase week on week. It also made him the most-searched World Cup player during the first week of July. Moreover, keywords like “Haaland best moments” increased by around 1300% week on week.
That said, the privacy questions remain and go beyond fans filming him in person, too. A doctored clip that seemed to show Haaland startled by his own reflection picked up more than 31 million views on X and spread fast across platforms like Weibo and Douyin, before fact-checkers traced it back to an unrelated skit by a creator and confirmed it had been altered with AI. Separately, a Viking-themed promo photo of the Norway squad, shot by photographer David Yarrow before the tournament, got picked up by fans and turned into a wave of AI edits dropping Haaland into battle scenes and armor.
Amid all this chaos, Norway is looking to Haaland for their quarterfinal game against England. He has scored 7 of Norway’s 12 goals in the tournament, making him directly responsible for nearly 60% of their offensive output. Also, he has generated 4.32 non-penalty expected goals (xG), which is the highest of any player at the World Cup, converting 7 goals from just 12 shots on target.
