With 19 goals already this season, Manchester City attacker Erling Haaland has clubs rushing to find a method to stop him.
So far this season, Bournemouth is the only team that has kept him from scoring. However, one Manchester United supporter has devised an innovative technique to keep clubs from having to face the Norwegian international.
Ten Hag’s Reds! has started a petition on the website Change to have Haaland prohibited from playing football entirely.
It comes after Haaland scored a hat-trick against the Red Devils in the Manchester derby on Sunday, as City humiliated their opponents.
The petition has been named “Petition to get Erling Haaland banned from Association Football because it’s just not fair”. The organiser has also explained why they set up the petition, branding Haaland a “robot”.
The description of the petition reads: “It’s just simply not fair. We can make a change. Now is the time for us people to act. This robot should not be allowed to carry on in our country.”
It began on Wednesday, before Haaland scored twice in City’s Champions League thrashing of Copenhagen. As of this writing, 47 people had signed the petition, which had an initial goal of 100 signatures.
While the petition has no chance of preventing Haaland from playing, it does demonstrate how much opposing supporters fear the striker.
City manager Pep Guardiola could not have asked for a better start for his summer purchase, and the Spaniard praised the 21-year-old following his hat-trick against Manchester United.
“I say it many times and I will say again – what Erling is doing he did in Norway, Austria and Germany. The quality we have alongside him helps him score, but what he is doing I didn’t teach him,” he said.
“He has incredible instincts. It comes from his mum and dad. He was born with that. I have had incredible centre-forwards in my career. What I like was in the last period of the game, he was involved. I want him to be involved.
“He became a player to score goals, but I want him in contact with the ball. I like him being part of those situations. But of course, he has to put the ball in the net, and he is a fantastic striker.
“He will take a break. There will be games he is not going to play. We are lucky, last season he could not play many games in a row – here we have incredible physios and thanks to them, he can play every 90 minutes.”
Haaland’s next victims could be Southampton, who City host on Saturday at the Etihad Stadium.
The Saints may be hoping that the petition has a few more signatories before the time they travel north to Manchester, or they’ll be adding their own names to it.
