Manchester City striker Erling Haaland spoke loud and clear after their Champions League defeat but he was too quiet before
As soon as the match was over, Erling Haaland was into his full stride. While Pep Guardiola was in the press conference room talking about how good he knew a team were that had never won a Champions League game in their history before Manchester City came to town, Haaland was a few metres away next door pointing out how ’embarrassing’ a 3-1 defeat had been.
It was perfect from Haaland, fronting up and accepting that it has to be the most experienced players who take the defeat on their shoulders and work to put things right. Whatever the injuries and the junior players that made up the bulk of the squad, this was still a team that should have had no problem keeping their hopes of a top-eight finish in their hands.
“I take full responsibility together with Rodri, Gigio [Donnarumma], Tijjani [Reijnders] – us experienced players,” he told TNT Sports immediately after the game. “I don’t want to blame anyone but we need to take more responsibility, because at the end it’s not good enough. We’re Man City, we can’t go around and not win games, it shouldn’t be like this.
FOLLOW OUR MAN CITY FACEBOOK PAGE! Latest news and analysis via the MEN’s Manchester City Facebook page
“I don’t have the answers. I take full responsibility of not being able to score. I just apologise to everyone; every single City supporter, every supporter that travelled, because in the end it’s embarrassing. Honestly, I don’t know what to say because I don’t have the answers, and what I can say is sorry.
“I don’t want to speak about how I feel or whatever. I do my best whenever I’m on the pitch, [and] I’m on the pitch quite often because we play a ridiculous amount of games. I try to do my best, that’s my job, and I try to get ready for the next game because now another game is in four days so we have to try recover again.”
The problem for Haaland is that this attitude simply hasn’t been seen on the pitch enough in recent weeks. There is mitigation in the fact that he must be exhausted, having comfortably played more than anybody else at the Etihad this season including 45 minutes against League One side Exeter in the FA Cup last week.
He wears his heart on his sleeve – Nico O’Reilly spoke this week about Haaland, one of the captains of the team now, being one of the first to let the players know if things hadn’t been good enough – and that frustration has bubbled over in recent weeks. The Norwegian is also a bit unfortunate in that he rarely has too many touches in a game and so if he isn’t scoring it can look like he is not doing very much at all.
However, if you are not looking like doing anything other than showing frustration at others, it is going to grate on fans in a way that apologising to them for losing won’t make up for. Fans accept when they make the commitment to travel such distances to watch the team that they may not see a win, but what they need is the effort.
If Haaland is not fresh enough to be able to help in any ways, what City need him to do more than anything is take the chances that come his way and too often in 2026 he has not. From the chance that was whipped wide at the end of the first half in Bodo to the tame effort in the box late on that would have beat Brighton, Haaland’s lack of goals – none from open play since Christmas – are an issue.
If he can take responsibility to improve that starting with Wolves on Saturday, he can start making headlines again with his feet rather than his mouth.
