Insatiable Haaland has the world at his feet
Erling Haaland marked Bundesliga debut with a hat-trick
Teenager came on with Dortmund trailing 3-1, his new side eventually won 5-3
Fans and media full of praise for his performance
Borussia Dortmund fans were not the only ones paying close attention to their side’s match at Augsburg on Saturday. Avid Bundesliga followers and fans around the world were also eagerly awaiting Erling Haaland’s debut appearance in the German top flight.
BVB coach Lucien Favre had other ideas, however, and decided to leave the Norwegian youngster out of his starting XI. But when his side went 3-1 down just after half time, Favre told the 19-year-old to start warming up.
Introduced into the fray on 56 minutes, Haaland pulled a goal back for his new team three minutes later with his first touch and went on to complete a stunning hat-trick that helped them earn a 5-3 win.
Haaland’s Bundesliga debut in stats:
Haaland wears the No17 shirt, the same number Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang wore during his Borussia Dortmund days. And as fate would have it, Aubameyang also scored a hat-trick on his Bundesliga debut back in August 2013, against Augsburg no less
At the age of 19 years, five months and 28 days, the Norwegian became the youngest ever player to score three on his maiden Bundesliga outing
Haaland needed only 23 minutes to do it, a record, beating the 62 minutes it took Hermann Ohlicher to score his Bundesliga debut treble for VfB Stuttgart in 1973
The Norwegian is also the first player to come off the bench and claim a hat-trick in his maiden Bundesliga appearance
His hat-trick came from the only three shots he had on goal
The son of former Manchester City captain Alf Inge Haaland is no stranger to claiming match balls. He had already scored five hat-tricks this season while at Red Bull Salzburg, and wowed the world with a trio of hat-tricks in one game against Honduras at last year's FIFA U-20 World Cup. His latest outstanding landmark certainly caught the eye of pundits, fans and the media in Germany and further afield.
What they said
“That’s what you signed me for.”
Erling Haaland to Michael Zorc, Borussia Dortmund’s director of football
“If he has as much success as [Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang] did, then I’ll settle for that.”
Borussia Dortmund captain Marco Reus
“I dreamed of scoring two but never three. I wanted to bring some positive energy on to the pitch and turn the match around.”
Erling Haaland
“It was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. He showed his potential as soon as he came on, his ability to make runs off the ball. To score three goals is incredible. He’s very good at finding space between the lines, which gives us more options in attack.”
Borussia Dortmund coach Lucien Favre
“We played well for the first hour. We played how we wanted to play and stuck to our philosophy. Haaland’s three goals left us in a state of shock though. He drove Dortmund forward and made life hard for us.”
Augsburg coach Martin Schmidt
How the media reacted
“Haaland takes Bundesliga by storm”
Spiegel Online (Germany)
“Haaland the saviour”
Bild (Germany)
“When fact beats fiction”
Sueddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)
“Haaland makes historic debut”
Aftenposten (Norway)
“Plain crazy!”
Dagbladet (Norway)
“Erling Haaland makes his considerable presence felt in German football”
Gazzetta dello Sport (Italy)
“Debutant Haaland sounds a warning”
France Football (France)
“Haaland is from another planet”
AS (Spain)
The youngster said last November that he was sleeping with the five matchballs from the five hat-tricks he had scored the previous season, jokingly calling them his “girlfriends”. He now has a new German girlfriend to add to his collection.