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Surrounded by red hats, No ۹ shirts and Erling Haaland action toys at her fabric shop in the small Norwegian town of Bryne, Olinda Haaland – no relation but proud to share the now world-famous name – said everybody in the striker’s home town was a football fan these days.
“It’s been pure joy,” she said of her namesake’s rise to the top of world football. “We all love him so much and he’s doing so much for Bryne.”
Haaland’s shop faces on to Bryne’s central square, where hundreds of people will gather on Saturday to watch an outdoor broadcast of Norway’s World Cup quarter-final match against England.
As she speaks, a steady stream of people enter in search of Haaland shirts, having decided that now is finally the time to commit. The retro World Cup shirts from ۱۹۹۸, the last time Norway qualified, sold out in two days. Now anything red will do, she said.
Although born in Leeds, where his father, Alf-Inge Haaland, played for Leeds United, it is Bryne, a small southern Norwegian farming town near Stavanger, where Haaland grew up and trained to become the footballer he is today.
The ۶ft ۴in (۱.۹۵ metre) Manchester City striker, who has scored ۶۲ goals in ۵۴ senior international matches, still pops up regularly at his old favourite haunts around the town. He also donates football equipment to children here and organises reading competitions. In the autumn, a rare ۱۶th-century book of Viking sagas bought by Haaland will arrive in the local library.
As he swung by Olinda’s shop, Andreas Vollusund, the town’s mayor and Haaland’s former schoolteacher, said the ۲۵-year-old had had a huge impact on the town.
“We are proud of the little boy who has grown into a huge Viking,” said Vollusund, who – naturally – was wearing a Haaland shirt. “Now Bryne is the capital of Norway, not Oslo. When he’s speaking about his home town, you can see in his eyes he loves his homeplace and that makes us really happy and proud of him.”
Vollusund, who taught Haaland when he was ۱۰ and knows his father well, said that as a child he was “funny, he loved joking with others, lots of energy, loved sports, loved football. When he was ۱۰-years-old he said he was going to be a footballer when he was an adult. He was very focused.”
Vollusund highlighted Bryne’s down-to-earth, hard-working farming culture and characteristics Haaland inherited from his parents (his mother was a national heptathlon champion) as two factors that contributed to his success.
“We have a culture to have fun with our kids, work hard,” he said. “We come from a place in Norway where our feet are on the ground. Farms, working hard … and he has good genes from his mum and dad.”
The Norwegian focus on fun for younger children in sport has played a key role in nurturing the talent of world-class athletes across a number of sports, including football, handball, athletics, chess, skiing and golf.
Incidentally, one of Haaland’s few sporting weaknesses is chess, according to Kjell Madland, who runs Norway Chess, based in nearby Sandnes, which Haaland has invested in. “I don’t think he’s very good but he likes to play,” he said.
On Saturday, the mayor will be serving hotdogs to ۳,۰۰۰ children and families at an alcohol-free screening of the match at Bryne’s football stadium. “We’re doing what we can to make this a big, big event,” he said.
Haaland is an enormous influence to young people in the town, Vollusund said. “Everyone looks up to him. He has shown you can come from a small town like Bryne and be the best player in the world. If you’re a young girl or boy, you can see you can become a footballer.”
Gabriel Høyland, Erling Haaland’s great uncle, said he thought Saturday’s game, which he plans to watch from his home on a farm just outside Bryne, was “wide open”, adding: “I can’t wait for the game to kick off and take it from there.” Norway and Haaland’s World Cup journey is “quite remarkable” he said. “We have never experienced this kind of atmosphere any time.”
Posing for pictures in front of a Haaland mural in the centre of town on Friday were ۱۰-year-old Emilian and his brother Leander, seven, who were on holiday with their family from Oslo. “We’re going to the stadium to see where it all started,” their mother, Chantal Samsing, said. Their father, Christopher Gundersen, said: “It’s bigger than football. The whole country is coming together. It has had a huge impact.”
At the Bryne FK stadium up the road, Alf Ingve Berntsen, who started training Haaland when he was eight, said Haaland’s extraordinary passion and ability was apparent from early on. “He was quite similar to how he is now. He was funny, he was smiling, he was scoring lots of goals. At that level you can see it is glowing. It’s a fire, it’s passion.”
Social media has divided many Norwegians, says Berntsen, but the World Cup has had the opposite effect. “It’s brought a kind of togetherness. Not just in Bryne but all over Norway. It’s amazing.”
