Football

When Pep Guardiola stepped down as Manchester City manager at the end of last season, he was told by one of the club’s media that he had conducted nearly 1,150 press conferences.

Read more NRL

«Why are you leaving? Because of one thousand, one hundred press conferences!» Guardiola joked in reply, an exchange captured in the new Amazon documentary A Beautiful Obsession. 

The Catalan was never less than captivating company on those appointments. Sometimes terse, often illuminating, frequently and acidically sarcastic. Most of the time, Guardiola would plant the headline-making statements expertly. Often, the top line of his briefings would be something he felt compelled to get off his chest, regardless of whether it related to the question just asked. 

Now and then, he’d land himself in hot water. After a breakthrough 1-0 win at reigning champions Chelsea in September 2017, the City boss was keen not to get ahead of himself. His team would end the season on a record-breaking 100-point tally, but he did not take beating the competition for granted.

“These geniuses are unbalanced people.”

A Beautiful Obsession is streaming now. Watch the four-part docuseries exclusively on Prime Video in the UK and Ireland 📺 pic.twitter.com/kgsy49MXmK

— Manchester City (@ManCity) August 19, 2026

“It’s still only September,” he said. “We still have [Manchester] United and the Harry Kane team.» Tottenham boss Mauricio Pochettino was furious over this apparent dismissal of his side as a one-man team, something Guardiola insisted was down to clumsy phrasing in expressing admiration for the England captain.

In summer 2021, City tried and failed to sign Kane in a prolonged pursuit. A year later, they got the world-class striker they needed. Now, after a decade of everything around City being defined by how it fell within Guardiola’s axis, things are different. It’s not his club anymore, nor is it that of his successor, Enzo Maresca. In 2026, Manchester City are the Erling Haaland team.

MORE: Will Erling Haaland be the greatest goalscorer in history?

Erling Haaland: World Cup game-changer

It’s hardly as if Haaland was some sort of non-entity in North America prior to his summer World Cup heroics with Norway. He was firmly established as the most relentless goalscorer in contemporary soccer, a global superstar of the sport. He featured on the cover of Time Magazine in August 2025.

One of the interviews for the piece was a walk-and-talk with Haaland in Boca Raton, Florida, where City were based for their 2025 FIFA Club World Cup campaign. The conversation proceeded in a relaxed fashion. Haaland was famous enough to be on the front of one of the United States most historical publications, but he wasn’t mobbed by fans. 

A source close to the player acknowledges that an arrangement like this would be unworkable now, certainly without security. Anywhere in the States, people would recognise the Viking Guy from the World Cup. Haaland has gone overground, his larger-than-life affability going hand-in-hand with phenomenal exploits on the field. He’s a European brand gone global.

Imagn Images

A World Cup in the largest media market on the planet presented a unique opportunity for Haaland. Norway were at their first World Cup since 1998. When the Scandinavian nation featured at the 1994 tournament in the United States, Haaland’s father Alfie was in the team. 

The team around the player, headed by respected agent Rafaela Pimenta, created the conditions for Haaland to exploit this situation and the player completely bought in. He has some assistance with his YouTube content, while his unfiltered Snapchat adventures – including shopping trips that yielded a Stetson and a taxidermy raccoon in Dallas – are all, quite clearly, his own work. On Instagram, 40.7 million followers before the tournament have almost doubled to 76.6 million at the time of writing.

Read more Golf

But drums, helmets and Viking rows are not enough to fuel this level of interest. On the field, Haaland capitalised emphatically, notching two goals in each of Norway’s opening wins over Iraq and Senegal. He finished the tournament with seven goals, his two brilliant efforts to sink Brazil, the most successful nation in World Cup history, standing as the peak of Haalandmania.

Is Haaland Man City’s only world-class player?

City have had elite players before, the best of the best. Sergio Aguero became the club’s all-time leading goalscorer and has a statue outside of the Etihad Stadium, as do David Silva and Vincent Kompany. Kevin De Bruyne, probably the club’s greatest ever player, will be similarly immortalised. Rodri won the Ballon d’Or in 2024.

But there is a level of cut-through outside of the City fraternity that Haaland has over and above any of those modern greats. Guardiola is a slightly different case, after leaving with an expanded north stand at the Etihad bearing his name. Everything around City came into his orbit for more than a decade. Even though he was appointed in 2016, Guardiola’s old Barcelona allies in the City boardroom – CEO Ferran Soriano and director of football Txiki Begiristain – first tried to appoint him in 2012. All roads led to him and all the infrastructure expanded in any direction it could to facilitate his genius. City were the Pep Guardiola Team.

Maresca served as one of Guardiola’s assistants in the 2022/23 treble-winning season and that proximity, giving the sense of some continuity, was a factor in his getting the job. But he can’t be Guardiola. More broadly, very few head coaches in the modern era double up as figureheads. The turnover in their roles is high and they must fit into a wider sporting structure. They are rarely the stars. Netflix and Prime Video probably won’t come calling.

Haaland is City’s star, something his weight of goals guarantees. He goes into this season with 162 in 199 appearances for the Premier League club, with a vastly multiplied captive audience waiting to see what he does next. It wouldn’t be Haaland’s thing to call himself the main man and the face of the club; all indications are of an exemplary teammate who is one of the boys. His father, a far less glamorous player, would bridle at anything else. But he is the face of the club; it’s an unavoidable fact.

Getty Images

Maresca will not give a millisecond of consideration to Haaland’s global profile when he’s chugging through his morning coffee. It would be bizarre if he did. But there are solid, purely footballing reasons for him to lean into the phenomenon.

City won the FA Cup and Carabao Cup last season, but they are two years removed from their most recent Premier League title, a record-breaking fourth in a row in 2023/24. Since lifting a maiden Champions League in 2022/23, they have won one tie in the knockout stage proper.

When he played among the likes of De Bruyne, Rodri, Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gundogan and Riyad Mahrez on the treble team, Haaland was the final piece in the puzzle. Those crowd favourites have gone, some fine players have arrived in their place, but Tijjani Reijnders’ move to Al Qadsiah a year after signing from Milan highlighted how City’s ongoing squad revamp has been hit and miss. Their collective quality has unquestionably fallen.

Rayan Cherki is a rare talent with seemingly boundless potential. Phil Foden has had a difficult couple of years, but was rightly PFA and FWA Player of the Year in 2023/24. Elliot Anderson is City’s record signing, with big expectations attached. But Haaland is City’s only, indisputably world-class player. They depend on him like never before.

This means it would be absurd for Maresca to do anything other than lean into his incredible talents. City’s focus on direct, attacking wingers during pre-season is an early indication he will do this to furnish Haaland with the supply line he craves. Every season, at one point or another under Guardiola, there were debates over whether or not City played better football overall without Haaland in the team. He was never an easy stylistic fit for classic Guardiola football.

Those conversations are over. As they approach the transfer window in a state of flux, City’s only chance of significant success this season is Haaland hitting one of those runs of form where he threatens to torch the record books. All roads lead to him. They’re the Erling Haaland team now.

Read more Miami Heat