Manchester City will spend the next few days watching their phones rather than the training pitch. Erling Haaland was taken off midway through the second half of Norway’s 2-1 defeat to Portugal on Sunday evening, and while nobody at the club has confirmed exactly what is wrong with him, the timing could hardly be worse.
Haaland lasted 67 minutes in Porto before signalling to the Norway bench that he had seen enough. He was replaced by Jorgen Strand Larsen and left the pitch under his own power, which offered some reassurance to anxious City supporters watching from home. There was no stretcher, no obvious distress, and he was seen embracing his manager, Stale Solbakken, on his way to the bench. But several reporters at the ground described him as limping in the moments before the substitution, and City’s medical staff are understood to be assessing him before deciding whether he poses any risk for this weekend.
The match itself told its own story, even without Haaland’s withdrawal dominating the headlines. Cristiano Ronaldo was absent again, having walked out on the Portugal camp the previous week after being left out of the starting line up against Denmark, and his continued absence meant Goncalo Ramos kept his place in attack. Kristoffer Ajer gave Norway an unlikely lead after 36 minutes, only for Joao Cancelo to level two minutes later. Ramos then won it for the hosts late on, and Portugal finished the night with ten men after Francisco Conceicao picked up two yellow cards in quick succession for dissent, the second coming after he was waved away following an unsuccessful penalty appeal. The result confirmed Portugal’s place among the leading sides in their Nations League group and put them on course for the new knockout stage next March, a detail that will matter far more in Lisbon than it does in Manchester.
Conflicting Signals Over the Severity
What happens next with Haaland is genuinely unclear, and it is worth being honest about that rather than pretending there is a firm diagnosis. Some reports from the match suggested a muscular issue serious enough to end his involvement there and then. Others around the Norway camp have pointed to a more mundane explanation, with suggestions that his workload over a hectic week of fixtures was being carefully managed and that the substitution was as much about caution as emergency. Both versions have circulated since Sunday night, and until City’s own medical staff speak publicly, supporters are left to make sense of two quite different stories.
What is not in dispute is that Haaland walked away from the ground unaided and without any obvious limp by the time he left the stadium, which will count for something when City’s doctors run their own checks this week. Equally, nobody at Etihad Campus will want to take any chances with their most important forward given what is coming up on the fixture list.
Why the Timing Could Not Be Worse
City return to Premier League action away at Liverpool on Sunday, a fixture that needs no extra billing given the recent history between these two clubs and where both currently sit in the table. Three days later, Paris Saint Germain visit the Etihad in the Champions League, a match City will want their strongest squad available for against a side that pushed them hard in Europe last season. Losing Haaland for either game, let alone both, would be a significant blow to a side that has leaned heavily on his goals again this season.
Enzo Maresca has shown since replacing Pep Guardiola that he is prepared to rotate his forward line when required, and Haaland’s understudies at the club are far from short of quality. But there is a difference between resting a player by choice and losing him through injury at the worst possible moment of the calendar, and City have had more than their share of unwanted fitness news involving their centre forward down the years. A groin problem, a hip issue, a knock here and there, the pattern has become familiar enough that supporters tend to hold their breath every time he goes down on international duty.
There is also the wider context in which this news lands. City are still contesting the independent commission’s guilty verdict on the vast majority of their 115 Premier League charges, with an appeal already lodged and no resolution in sight. None of that has anything to do with a muscle twinge in Porto, but it does mean City have precious little room for anything else to go wrong just now. A fit and firing Haaland has been one of the few straightforward certainties in an otherwise complicated season at the Etihad.
For Liverpool, the uncertainty will be watched just as closely from the other side. Arne Slot’s side have their own injury list to manage, and facing a City side without their biggest goal threat would change the calculations for a game that already carries enormous weight in the title picture. Nobody at Anfield will say so publicly, but a weakened City attack would be viewed as one small mercy in a fixture that rarely offers any.
Maresca is expected to give an update on Haaland’s condition before City’s preparations for Liverpool begin in earnest, and it would be no surprise if the manager chooses his words carefully until the scans are back. Until then, this is a story about uncertainty rather than confirmed bad news, and it is worth treating it that way. Haaland has shrugged off knocks before and come back scoring within days. He may well do exactly that again. But with Liverpool and Paris Saint Germain waiting either side of a single week, City can have done without the worry altogether.
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