Guardiola: Haaland has silenced his early doubters
Guardiola: Haaland has silenced his early doubters :
Pep Guardiola believes Erling Haaland has already silenced the doubters following his debut double in Saturday’s 2-0 victory over West Ham.
During last weekend’s Community Shield loss to Liverpool, Haaland had been criticized for his underwhelming performance.
After signing for £51 million ($60.48 million), the striker scored twice in the first half, a penalty and a neat finish, to make his Premier League debut.
Guardiola smiled: “He couldn’t adapt to the Premier League a week ago. Now he’s alongside Thierry Henry, Alan Shearer, and Cristiano Ronaldo.” “He’s a guy with incredible talent, a goal scorer. I’ve known him for a month. I know he handled criticism well, and he trained well. We’ll see how he reacts to compliments.”
When he was given the opportunity to start, Haaland had already glanced a header wide.
Having replaced the injured Lukasz Fabianski, Alphonse Areola had been in goal for only a few minutes when he knocked the Norway international to the ground. Haaland sent Areola the wrong way with a low spot-kick that clipped a post on its way in, sending Areola the wrong way.
“I liked the way he took the ball to take the penalty,” said Guardiola. In my opinion, if someone took this ball, he would have punched his teammates in the face. I think that’s a good sign. “You have to be self-confident, ambitious, and have a ruthless mentality. He scored, of course.”
After 25 minutes, Haaland scored from Kevin De Bruyne’s through-ball past Areola. Guardiola took him off with 15 minutes remaining after he had twice scored a hat-trick on debut.
In my time as a manager, I had the privilege of managing Lionel Messi, and if he scored two, he wanted three, if he scored three, he wanted four, and if he got four, he wanted five,” said Guardiola. “The top goalscorers, the strikers, they are never satisfied. They are always hungry, starving, and they always want more. But at the same time, I have to involve the new players and let them play.”
It looked like West Ham was there for the taking. The team somehow managed to start the season with only one centre-half available despite a summer of rebuilding. Issa Diop has not been available to play, according to manager David Moyes. “They played really well today. It was really difficult to deal with tactically. We couldn’t get close to them today. “From our point of view, we were resilient. However, the talk should be about Manchester City today. They played very well. Hopefully we’ll be able to do better in the weeks and months to come.”