Erling Haaland and folklore

I will not be the one to affirm that Big Data was born in Galicia, but almost. The first song that any Galician child learns well, even before El barquito chiquitito, is a jewel of national folklore entitled Na beira do mar and which reads the following: "green ollos are traitors, blue are lies, black and brown are firm and true ”. Taken to the extreme, it could be considered a bit racist, but the goodness of the Galician people invites us to think that it is only a warning, more or less veiled, of the risk involved in hiring a footballer with light eyes like Erling Haaland .

With pure scorers, the same thing happens to me as with teams that call themselves winners: when they don't score - or when they don't win, as has happened to Atleti del Cholo Simeone lately - the presentation poster is so orphaned that one might feel ripped off , as in those mid-afternoon westerns in which nobody draws the gun and the action takes place between deep dialogues, without a single shot being fired. "You have the goal or you don't have it," says one of the oldest maxims in football. In reality, the goal is scored or not scored, it does not matter if the chosen number nine or a lazy right-back does it, with the difference that the latter was called by different paths and the statistics may weigh on the sweet tooth. : nobody guarantees as many goals as the game itself,although in the absence of this, more or less certain promises such as those of the Norwegian giant can thrive.

When one evaluates the signing of a classic center forward, one must weigh his true qualities beyond fame. In the specific case of Haaland, his ability to run into space, his devastating force, his poisonous sting and an aerial game of those that win great battles although, at least for the moment, very few wars are well known. Is he an excellent scorer? Sure ... But like so many others before him, he can also stop being so at any time and without prior notice: nothing is more easily twisted in football than that supposed infallibility in front of the goal, as history has taken care of. show us hundreds of times.

You fall into a changing room where you don't fit in, with a coach who asks you for something more than shooting balls, with rivals locked in their own area willing to deny any space and, suddenly, you look so orphaned of stimuli that you no longer know even recognize in the mirror. I understand that everything said may seem like a catastrophic vision of the matter, but any technical secretariat in the world would do well not to trust everything to a priorism, especially when it is already talking about figures that do not allow great margin for error before becoming ruin.

Erling Haaland will be many things in the future, I am not saying that he will not, but it remains to be seen how he adapts to a club where almost all of its footballers felt the latest sensation of world football at some point in their careers and if he will be able - or not - to manage the second great leap in his career with the same efficiency as the first: be careful with misinterpreting folklore and relying on a simple glance.

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