“I went to sleep and woke up seeing he scored two goals” – Tottenham legend left baffled by Man City’s Erling Haaland | OneFootball

Former Netherlands international Rafael van der Vaart has admitted that Erling Haaland leaves him utterly baffled while acknowledging his place among the greatest strikers of all time.

Van der Vaart is well placed to offer a considered verdict on some of the game’s most decorated players, having shared a pitch with world-class talent throughout a career that took in spells at Real Madrid, Tottenham and the Netherlands national team, where he was regarded as one of the most technically gifted midfielders of his generation.

His assessment of Haaland is striking precisely because it captures the paradox that has defined the Manchester City striker’s career – a player who defies conventional footballing logic at every turn yet continues to produce numbers and moments that no amount of scepticism can adequately explain away.

Haaland’s extraordinary FIFA World Cup campaign with Norway has only sharpened the debate around his standing in the game, with the striker having scored seven goals across the tournament to date – including two against Brazil in the Round of 16 in a game that, as van der Vaart freely admits, he did not see coming given what he witnessed in the first-half.

The comments arrive at a moment when Haaland’s performances in North America have placed him firmly at the centre of the conversation around the greatest strikers of his generation and beyond, making van der Vaart’s reflections as timely as they are entertaining.

Van der Vaart: “I went to sleep and woke up seeing he scored two goals”

Speaking to AceOdds.com, van der Vaart opened by wrestling openly with the challenge of placing Haaland within the broader pantheon of elite strikers, and the honest uncertainty in his words speaks to something that few pundits have been willing to articulate so directly.

“For me, it is very tough to say whether you are the best or one of the best strikers of all time when talking about Erling Haaland,” he said. “Also, it is so difficult to analyse a striker like him. I will explain to you why, because when I see him for a whole game, I am watching him and I think to myself 8 out of 10 times that the guy can’t play football at all.”

The former Netherlands international then turned to Norway’s victory over Brazil as the perfect illustration of a phenomenon he has apparently witnessed repeatedly: “But all of a sudden, ‘boom, boom, boom’, he is there. For me, that is such a big quality. That is an unbelievable mental strength to have. When I watched the first half against Brazil, he didn’t touch the ball. I went to sleep, and I woke up seeing that he scored two goals. He didn’t touch one ball in the first half!”

Van der Vaart was similarly candid on the question of whether he would personally rank Haaland as the finest striker in the world: “Will I personally say he is the best striker? No, because I like strikers who can do a lot of things with the ball, but his numbers, his mental strength and his power… Of course, you have to mention him as one of the best – also of all time – but it is difficult to explain when talking about a player like him.”

He concluded with a personal anecdote that will resonate with anyone who has ever struggled to reconcile what they see with what a player ultimately produces: “When I watch him play when I am with my wife, I always say to her, ‘look at him, he lost the ball again,’ but then she says to me that he scored two times, and I just don’t know what to say. Of course, I am super jealous that he is not Dutch. He reminds me a bit of Roy Makaay. He was like that too; he did not really contribute to the game, but he was a crazy finisher. It is a big quality, and I respect him a lot.”

What does van der Vaart’s assessment tell us about Haaland’s place in football history?

The comparison to Roy Makaay is an instructive one from a man who played alongside and against some of the finest strikers in European football across his career, with the former Bayern Munich forward widely regarded as one of the purest finishers of his era despite possessing a similarly understated influence on the flow of a game outside of his moments of clinical intervention.

That van der Vaart reaches for Makaay rather than a more celebrated name says something important about the specific kind of genius Haaland represents – one rooted not in touch, technique or involvement but in the rare and almost inexplicable ability to materialise at the decisive moment with a composure and power that no amount of peripheral anonymity can undermine.

For Manchester City and Enzo Maresca, the conversation around Haaland’s footballing identity is one the club’s supporters and coaching staff have long since made peace with, with the striker’s extraordinary scoring record at the Etihad Stadium making the philosophical question of what he contributes between goals largely irrelevant to those whose job it is to win matches.

Whether Haaland goes on to silence even the most eloquent of sceptics with a World Cup winner’s medal in North America remains to be seen, but van der Vaart’s assessment – warm, honest and openly contradictory – captures better than most the singular and enduring mystery of one of football’s most compelling figures.