Erling Haaland is widely recognised as one of the best strikers in the world, but he still believes he can “improve on everything” about his game.
The Borussia Dortmund man has been strongly linked with a move to the likes of Manchester City, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, with reports suggesting he has a release clause of €75million that becomes active at the end of the season.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Haaland may have further tempted those teams and any others who have the money to do a deal by suggesting he is far from the finished article.
“I think I can improve on everything,” he said. “If you say I am good at finishing, I can improve my finishing a lot. I can become faster, so I can improve that. I can become stronger, so I can improve that.
“But if I should improve one thing, it would be to not get injured, because if I am not injured, I will play a lot more games and I will deliver even better. If you were to ask what my goals are for 2022, it is to not be injured, and the goals for the rest of my career are to not be injured. That’s the main thing.”
Haaland has scored 80 goals in 79 games in all competitions since moving to Signal Iduna Park from Salzburg just over two years ago.
Of players in Europe’s top five leagues, only Bayern’s Robert Lewandowski (107) has scored more in that time, having played in 11 more games than Haaland.
The 21-year-old was named as part of the FIFPro World 11 at The Best FIFA Football Awards, where Lewandowski took home the top men’s prize ahead of Lionel Messi and Mohamed Salah. Haaland was asked who his top three would have been.
“I think you would have to say Lewandowski number one,” he said, “Then you have, for me, [Karim] Benzema has also been amazing, but Messi has also been outstanding – so Benzema and Messi in shared second and third place.”
The Norway forward was also asked about his recent comments that Dortmund were forcing him to make a decision on his future as soon as possible.
Haaland said in a post-match interview following last week’s 5-1 win against Freiburg that the club “press me to make a decision now about my future”, though Dortmund chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke denied this.
“I don’t really want to say too much about it, but I felt it was time for me to say something,” Haaland told Sky. “A lot of others were speaking – so that was it. Now, I don’t want to say too much. I said what I said, and now we move on.”
