Haaland has now gotten more than Tommy Johnson's club record of 38 goals in a single campaign during the 1928-29 season.
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Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola showered praise on in-form striker Erling Haaland following his astonishing five-goal performance against RB Leipzig in the Champions League. The forward’s incredible outing helped City register a thumping 7-0 win over the German outfit in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16 tie. Following the opening leg draw, Man City have booked their place in the quarterfinal with an 8-1 aggregate win on Tuesday night.
Erling Haaland also broke a record in this process after he reached 39 goals for the season. He has now gotten more than Tommy Johnson’s club record of 38 goals in a single campaign during the 1928-29 season. An overjoyed Guardiola, as quoted by their club’s website said, “Five goals, what can I say?. I said many times, he’s a joyful guy. His mood in the locker room is always happiness. He is a gift to all of us. He is a huge competitor, his mentality is there. He scored five goals which is not easy.”
The Manchester City manager added: “Today he scored five goals and I think he made 30-35 ball contacts and this is what we are looking for. I had the feeling when you are involved in the game offensively, defensively, when the ball comes to score a goal, you are more clever, more precise, you are in the game. It’s difficult to score – he can do it though – when you don’t touch the ball for 40 or 50 minutes. Sometimes it’s his fault, sometimes he doesn’t move. I said in Palace, you didn’t play well today. But other days, it’s our fault.”
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Guardiola also spoke about the process of integrating Haaland with the rest of the team and how everyone is doing their part in making it possible. “In Leipzig, we could not find him. We did not find him in the second half. Sooner or later we are talking about, we are working a little bit and everyone because we try to make the process sometimes quicker. I would say we have to be slower. But once we break the holding midfielder, we have to be quicker. Sometimes the people think that defensive line-up, we are going to play slowly, we are going to play comfortable but our mentality has always been so, so aggressive from the day one and sometimes we cannot do it because the opponents are there,” he explained.
Notably, Haaland has equalled Lionel Messi’s record for most goals in a Champions League game in 2012 for Barcelona. Two years later, Luiz Adriano did the same for Shahktar Donetsk. Haaland, however, was not able to score more because he was substituted. “If he achieves this milestone at 22, his life will be boring!” Guardiola added. “Now he has a target to do it in the future, that’s why I made the substitution. I didn’t know it happened with Messi, they told me. I made a substitution because normally when a game is over and I want use as many players as possible.”
