Erling Haaland has insisted he is really happy at Manchester City but admitted that “you never know what the future brings”.
The prolific Norway striker joined City in the summer of 2022 and has scored an astonishing 80 goals in 84 appearances, thus playing a vital part in the club’s Treble achievement last season and in their hunt for further successes during the current campaign.
The 23-year-old, who is contracted until 2027, stressed his happiness at City but refused to rule out a future move away from Manchester with Real Madrid reportedly being notable admirers.
“I’m really happy, especially with the people that I’m surrounded with; the manager, the directors, the board, they are a group of amazing people and I’m really happy, I have to say,” Haaland said.
“If I say this now it’s probably going to be a massive headline: tomorrow you never know what the future brings, but I’m happy. You can write this but you also have to write everything I said before. I’m happy.”
Haaland added that he is not currently thinking about whether he might sign a new deal at City because “my focus mainly now is on the pitch, there’s a lot of games. Two days ago was the Manchester derby, now Champions League. Sunday is Liverpool”.
Despite winning the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup in his remarkable first season, Haaland’s appetite for silverware has not been dulled.
He admitted that he has age on his side, knows that he can improve multiple facets of his game further and said his success is down to working on being mentally strong.
“You can think about it in two ways,” he added. “One thing, I came here and won it all, and the other thing, I’m 23 years old and I won everything and I got the taste of it, how it is to win everything. How I work is that when I feel this, I want to win it again. Easy as that.
"People say I’m good at scoring goals but I missed the biggest chance in the world ever a couple of days ago [during the Manchester derby but he later scored]. Yes, I’ve been missing, I missed a lot of chances. I will still keep on missing chances, but I will still keep scoring goals.
“I’ll probably miss a big chance in the future as well, and people are going to criticise me, but what can I do then? Should I think of that? No, just focus on scoring more goals and to help the team.
“It’s been a challenge for me when I was young — I remember I would start crying if we lost and I missed a lot of chances. I’ve been working on it a lot, it’s been a challenge but in the end everything is in here [the head]”.
'Competition keeps getting tougher'
City host FC Copenhagen on Wednesday evening in the second leg of their Champions League last-16 tie holding a 3-1 advantage from the game in Denmark.
Should City advance it will be their seventh successive appearance in the quarter-finals and Pep Guardiola said that progressing deep into the competition keeps getting more challenging.
“It’s getting better and tougher,” the City manager said. “Always I had the feeling, when I arrived in Barcelona in the first years that OK, we arrive in semi-finals. Now to reach the semi-finals is so difficult. The teams are better, managers are better.
“Everything is even more difficult than when I was a football player. But at the end, the better teams always go through. When you play two good games, you have more chance to go through.”