Manchester City superstar striker Erling Haaland hasn’t received as much fanfare this season with the Citizens falling further behind Liverpool in the Premier League title race, but he’s actually on pace for his best goal-scoring numbers of the season.
The clear top dog in Manchester with Rodri injured, Haaland has scored 12 goals in 11 Premier League matches this season, putting him on pace to potentially flirt with a historic 40-goal season.
Haaland already holds the Premier League record for most single-season goals after smashing home 36 with 8 assists in Man City’s treble-winning 2022/23 campaign.
Although the Norwegian sensation’s all-around numbers have slipped in recent seasons, his displays in 2022/23 and then prior to that with Borussia Dortmund show that his all-around game is underappreciated.
Barcelona like to have strikers who can score 30 goals in a season but also assist 10, and there are rumblings that Haaland is still on their radar as a dream transfer target to replace Robert Lewandowski, who is currently the only player with more goals this season than the Man City No. 9.
Lewandowski is leading a Hansi Flick-coached attack that is the best in world football, and although he is 36, his excellence in 2024/25 has made the Blaugrana seemingly less keen on signing a striker to replace him in 2025 despite the transfer links to Haaland and Swedish star Viktor Gyokeres.
Haaland, even from the moment he signed with Manchester City in 2022, has always been tabbed as a player interested in playing for one of the two giant Spanish clubs.
With Real Madrid off the table after the summer signings of Kylian Mbappe and Endrick, Barcelona have become even more frequently linked to the 24-year-old marksman.
The thinking is that, in a few years, Haaland will enter his prime and have won everything there is to win in the Premier League. Then, he, like so many before him, would try to make it as a perennial Ballon d’Or winner and something of a footballing deity at either Real Madrid or Barcelona.
Lewandowski can’t play forever, so even though he remains the arguable standard bearer at the position from an all-around perspective, Barcelona could still land Joan Laporta’s dream long-term target in the future.
But that may still be off the table, because The Mirror’s Harry Pratt reports that Manchester City are confident they can sign Erling Haaland to a contract that would make him the highest-paid player in the Premier League at a whopping 500,000 pounds per week, exceeding the current salary of their top playmaker Kevin De Bruyne.
It would be a huge sign of respect to Haaland and an example of how serious the club are about making sure the forward never leaves the Etihad. But noticeably, The Mirror are also reporting that Haaland’s camp are insistent that the Citizens keep his 150 million pound release clause.
The fabled Haaland release clause has been debated for years, but it is real and gives the striker a chance to choose when and to where he leaves the Etihad. Barcelona increasingly looks like that destination, so the “when” is the bigger issue.
If Manchester City and Erling Haaland strike this new deal during the season, Barcelona will not be able to afford the bump in salary, especially since they already have so much money tied up in Lewandowski and Frenkie de Jong, as well as the need to give raises to their emerging youth stars.
Lewandowski isn’t going anywhere because he’s so good, and neither is De Jong because 1) He can be important to Flick when healthy and 2) Nobody else will want to pay him the 600,000 pounds per week he currently makes as Europe’s highest-paid player.
So when it comes to a 2025 transfer for Haaland, a new contract with Manchester City will completely take the striker off the table for a Barcelona move next summer.
However, the chances of a move down the line when Barcelona have more revenue, more team success under Flick, less wages tied up in veterans, and the readiness to replace Lewandowski are actually still high – definitely higher than Real Madrid’s.
