Erling Haaland's new contract to 2034, and what it tells us about controlling a narrative
The Norwegian superstar has been a massive success at Man City since joining in 2022 from Dortmund. But his new contract is extraordinary, and has pitfalls
What can we make of Erling Haaland’s massive contract extension at Manchester City, announced last Friday?
Having spoken to a variety of football folk over the past few days, by which I mean club executives, contract lawyers, agents and some fellow journalists who have covered this story, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to me, aside from being a PR exercise.
The story certainly led to hundreds of articles around the world. It enabled City’s brilliantly slick social media team to generate oodles of new content. Oodles and oodles and oodles.
It appears to have given City’s faltering season a shot in the arm, as their 6-0 rampaging win at Ipswich yesterday showed.
And, in a message that many City fans are interpreting as evidence that City have won their “115” case against the Premier League, those City fans have been claiming that City are now trolling the Premier League and their rivals by giving Haaland a 115-month contract extension.
The only flaw in this cunning claim is that it is, almost certainly, not a 115-month extension.
If Haaland signed the new deal last week, as the club appeared to suggest, then it's a 113.5-month contract to the end of June 2034. Player contracts are invariably signed to end on the last day of June in any given year, which also ties in with most clubs’ accounting years.
City, like most clubs, routinely use 30 June as the end of their financial year, as for the most recent accounts to 30 June 2024.
If Haaland actually signed at the end of December, it's 114 months. Only if he signed at the end of November is it a 115-month contract. And sources tell me that he did in fact sign in recent weeks anyway.
So what exactly is going on?
Some influential City-supporting twitter accounts, like that of former City advisor Stefan Borson, have embraced the notion of Haaland’s 115-month contract and other investments as being indicative City are optimistic of winning their “115” case.
Stefan is a smart bloke so I can only assume he must know Haaland signed his new deal at the end of November for his 115-month claim to be true. As Stefan himself might say: “Sure. Sounds likely. 🤪 “
Anyway, cutting to the chase, today’s analysis explains:
Why a contract extension to 2034 defies logic for both City and Haaland. How “control of the narrative”, or PR, is more important to City than actual facts.
How City have swayed their fanbase to their own narrative, to the extent their fans will believe whatever they’re told, even if facts contradict that.
Why a verdict in the “115" case, whatever it is, will never be acceptable, for anyone. Or rather won’t be acceptable without literally thousands of pages of detailed explanation on what the charges actually were, why the PL thought it was necessary to bring those charges, and what hard evidence they had before doing so.
And as light relief, I’ll share some correspondence from recent days between a Man City-supporting Sporting Intelligence Substack subscriber, who got in touch late last week, believing he was contacting some editorial head of this site - to request my sacking! - apparently unaware he was just emailing me.