Opening Scene: The Calm Before the Roar
It’s early morning in Manchester, and the world’s most prolific striker stands quietly in his kitchen, a mug in hand, sunlight slipping through the window. No roar of the Etihad. No flashbulbs. Just the hiss of the espresso machine and the soft clink of a spoon against ceramic.
“Coffee is a superfood,” he says, half-grinning. “If you do it right.”
For Erling Haaland, even the smallest rituals carry intent. The drink isn’t just caffeine; it’s calibration. A little milk for strength, maple syrup to “protect the caffeine.” He pours with the precision of a surgeon. The result: a simple cup of focus — the kind that fuels the machine before the storm.
He sits by the counter, sipping slowly. The silence feels heavy, but not empty. It’s the calm before the roar, the unseen stillness that feeds the chaos to come.
Act One: Routine & Discipline
Haaland believes in logic, not superstition or routine for routine’s sake, but logic. “You should have an early start with fresh daylight and fresh air,” he explains. “Ideally, go for a small walk.”
He’s not preaching. It’s more an observation from someone who has studied his own body like a craftsman studies his tools. “Why not try to optimise small things?” he says. “It’s my life, my career.”
Breakfast is minimalist: eggs, sourdough, pepper. The simplicity is almost monk-like, a reflection of someone who knows greatness isn’t built on extravagance but repetition. The details matter: the quality of ingredients, the timing, the calmness in how he chews. Every movement hints at intention.
“I’ve been living alone since I was 16,” he recalls. “I had to cook, clean, and learn fast.” His father, former footballer Alfie Haaland, left him with a stocked fridge and a few cleaning supplies before returning to Norway. “Then he was gone. I had to figure out the rest.”
That early independence shaped him. It taught him to value order, to control the controllables. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the foundation of his discipline.
Act Two: The Human Side
The next scene belongs to Isabelle. She walks into frame, sleepy-eyed but smiling. Their conversation is light, teasing. She played football too, a left-footed winger from their hometown. “She had speed and power,” Haaland says proudly. “Like Giggs.”
They talk about how they met. She jokes that she liked his best friend first. He laughs. The exchange feels easy, grounded, a glimpse into the man who’s so often reduced to a statistics machine.
Between the jokes and tender smiles, you sense the rhythm of domestic normality. Isabelle cooks, he flips eggs. Their baby cries. The camera captures the ordinary chaos of family life and how he carries the same calmness into it.
Even as football consumes him, Haaland makes space for stillness. That balance, between warrior and partner, machine and man, might be his most elite trait.
Act Three: The Athlete’s Craft
Then the tone shifts.
In the gym, the atmosphere thickens, part therapy room, part laboratory. His trainer Mario works on his legs, guiding his stretches with playful banter and precise hands. “I have natural flexibility in my groins and hips,” Haaland says. “It’s important — how else do you score these goals?”
He’s not joking. The routine is brutal: pressure, release, stretch, hold. “Treatment is not enjoyable,” Mario reminds us. “It’s not a spa massage. It’s work.”
The room hums with effort: rubber bands snapping, breath controlled, joints pushed past comfort. Haaland laughs through the pain. “No, Mario,” he says, grimacing. “Not that one.”
The camera lingers on his focus. Every movement is deliberate. This is how greatness is built, not in stadiums, but in the slow grind of maintenance.
“Flexibility and power,” Mario explains in his thick Italian accent. “Together, that’s the best combination for an athlete.”
It’s here that the myth of Haaland — the Viking, the machine, the phenomenon — dissolves. What’s left is the craftsman, obsessively tuning his body to chase marginal gains.
After treatment, he stands under red light lamps, his substitute for sunlight during England’s grey months. The glow paints him crimson, the color of regeneration. “We don’t get much sun,” he says. “So I use this. It keeps me strong.”
Even science bends to his will.
Act Four: Food & Focus
“Let’s get milk,” Haaland says, sliding into his car. The errand turns into an adventure, a detour to a local farm that supplies raw milk and organic meat.
He laughs with the farmers, shakes hands, picks steaks. “Ribeye, tomahawks, honey,” he recites. “Quality is everything.”
The farmer smiles and promises to let him milk a cow next time. Haaland grins like a kid. For all his fame, he’s disarmingly normal, a Norwegian lad who still finds joy in simple things.
Back home, the kitchen becomes his arena. “Cooking is a big part of my life,” he says, salting the steak. “Especially steak and potatoes.”
He moves with precision, bringing meat to room temperature, layering salt, searing at full heat. The sizzle hits the mic, sharp and alive. “You need to feel it,” he says. “The crust tells you everything.”
Isabelle preps her banana sauce, a tricky recipe that requires constant whisking. “It’s impressive if she nails this,” Haaland teases. She does.
Then, the grill. The smell of fat and flame fills the air. He flips the meat with surgeon-like timing, proud but focused. “Most people turn it too early,” he says. “Patience is key.”
It’s more than cooking. It’s philosophy — proof that greatness lives in attention to detail, even at dinner.
The Ritual of Recovery
Before dinner, he steps into the ice bath. No music, no noise, just the sting of cold against skin. His face tightens, then relaxes. “It helps the blood flow,” he says. “But it’s also for the mind. Doing something you don’t want to do — that’s the point.”
Afterwards, the sauna. Steam clouds the lens. The contrast between freeze and fire mirrors the balance of his life — pressure and peace, work and recovery. “I try to do it every day,” he says. “But never before matches. Always after.”
He leans back, breathing slow. The heat hums. “Lovely,” he whispers.
Dinner, Laughter, and Stillness
Later, the house glows with warmth. Isabelle chops onions, he hums softly. The grill hisses outside. “Who’s the better chef?” she asks.
“Depends,” he replies, smirking. “I’m better at meat and fish. You’ve got the chicken.”
She laughs. “So… you?”
“Yeah, me.”
They eat with their hands — steak, potatoes, banana sauce. The baby laughs off-camera. The scene feels almost cinematic in its ordinariness.
“I live to eat,” he says, smiling between bites. “Food is the best part of the day.”
He chews thoughtfully. “Except seeing you when you come home,” he adds, half-teasing, half-truth.
Final Scene: The Philosophy of Simplicity
Night falls. The plates are cleared. Haaland sits back, satisfied, the day winding down. His body, which carried him through sprints, strains, and stretches, is quiet again.
“It’s been a lovely day doing a lot of good things for my body,” he says to the camera. “And it’s been great to show you my daily routine — what I normally do in life.”
No drama, no grandeur. Just a man who understands that mastery is found in the mundane, in the quality of coffee beans, the timing of a stretch, the patience to wait before turning a steak.
The secret of Erling Haaland’s greatness isn’t in his goals. It’s in his consistency. It’s in how he treats his body as both temple and tool, how he respects recovery as much as work, how he finds joy in a quiet kitchen.
He is, at heart, an ordinary man committed to extraordinary repetition.
That’s what greatness really looks like — not fireworks, but fire. Not chaos, but calm.
And when the next match comes, and the world watches him sprint through defenders like a force of nature, they’ll see the result of all this — the coffee, the stretching, the red light, the steak.
They’ll call it instinct. He’ll know it’s routine.
