Tommy Martin: Erling Braut Haaland pillaging with the menace and madness of the Vikings

Erling Haaland celebrates scoring Borussia Dortmund's second goal against Sevilla on Tuesday. (Bernd Thissen/Pool via AP)

It is presumably highly insulting for a modern Scandinavian person to be compared to a Viking.

Even if that person is as big, belligerent, and obviously intent on plunder as Erling Braut Haaland.

I imagine it is viewed by contemporary Scandis, with their advanced economies and tasteful furniture, as an example of lazy stereotyping, like comparing an Irish person to a leprechaun or a ‘90s boyband crooner.

Still, when you see how opposition defenders react to being confronted by Borussia Dortmund’s Norwegian striker, it is hard to think of anything but the inhabitants of an eighth century monastery fleeing in terror, desperately stowing away the chalices.

Though you know you shouldn’t, you can’t help seeing in Haaland’s brand of mad-eyed destructiveness visions of bearded men with broadswords, villages aflame and longboats full of loot.

His shots are like thumps from Thor’s hammer. He is guided by his own Odin, father, god of wisdom and former Leeds and Manchester City stalwart, Alf-Inge.

Sorry, but with Erling Haaland right now, every game seems like Ragnarok.

It’s not exactly a methodology of which proper historians would approve, but, by looking at Haaland in action, you can actually get a sense for what being ravaged by Norsemen might have been like for the panic-stricken residents of an Irish monastic retreat or Anglo-Saxon hamlet.

Like the bewildered centre-halves of Europe, they would surely have heard tell of this terrifying new threat sweeping the continent. Bardic scrolls — the Dark Ages equivalent of a BT Sports subscription — would have warned of what was to come. But, face to face, , they must have shared the same brief experience of shock and incomprehension as today’s hapless defenders, before being similarly hacked into small pieces.

Sevilla’s vanquished villagers included centre-halves Jules Koundé and Diego Carlos, who, prior to encountering the rampaging Haaland in the first leg of the Champions League Round of 16 a few weeks back, had presided over a run of seven clean sheets in a row.

Kounde and Carlos have been coveted by many top European clubs in recent seasons, including those on both sides of Manchester.

Both might have thought they had encountered every imaginable type of striker in Sevilla’s domestic and European campaigns, their Europa League-winning run testing them with everything from the speed and directness of Marcus Rashford to the power and nous of Romelu Lukaku.

Yet to watch their encounter with Haaland was to see the destabilising effect of pure, unadulterated fear. In the first leg, Carlos simply turned and ran away from the boy brute, seeking the safety of his penalty box like a man running into a house that was already on fire. Haaland plundered two goals and an assist that night, leaving Sevilla in smoking ruins — having won eight in a row prior to that, the Spanish side have won one game in five since.

In Tuesday night’s second leg, even with 90 minutes of forewarning, Haaland’s unique combination of talents was again the decisive factor. His first goal came from a tap-in, a spirit-breaking blow for opponents who had managed to restrict him to eight ineffective touches of the ball in the opening half hour.

His second was an epic saga unto itself. It began with Haaland berserking through the centre of the Sevilla defence, simply shunting the covering midfielder Fernando out of the way, keeper Bounou cowering on the line while the striker shinned an improvised finish with a swinging left leg.

As Haaland celebrated, the Sevilla defenders turned to Turkish referee Cuneyt Cakir, who shrugged his own incomprehension and pointed to the halfway line.

Pulled back into polite modernity by VAR, Cakir conceded that, yes, the brutal disposal of Fernando was, technically, in breach of all current human rights norms, but spotted that a minute previously Kounde had committed a desperate yank on Haaland in the box.

It’s at this point that we should mention that, as well as boasting speed, strength, skill, and a shot like the wrath of Mjolnir, Haaland is also a bit mad.

Mad in that way particular to muscular northern European youth, the type you encounter on an organised trek while on a backpacking holiday who seem like great fun to start with until they declare their intent on day three to strip naked and wrestle with a crocodile.

In this way Haaland is also channelling the spirit of the Vikings, the best craic of all the historical genres. The enduring appeal of the conquering Norsemen is down to a lingering sense of bug-eyed nuttiness that has echoed down the centuries.

Take the widely held belief that they wore horns on their helmets, which is entirely historically inaccurate, but presumably the work of some contemporaneous scribe who decided it was totally like something they would have done.

Haaland’s goading exchange with goalkeeper Bounou, returning with interest after his successful retaken penalty what he had received upon missing the first, was in keeping with the atmosphere of flaming-torched lunacy that accompanies his every appearance.

Earlier he had celebrated his first goal by lifting assist-provider Marco Reus like a prized pig, bellowing in the face of the patiently tolerant Dortmund captain.

It is this sense of unpredictable belligerence, married with his monstrous physicality and ever-sharpening technique that makes the scale of his future conquests seem unlimited. Those clubs who have been wondering if they can afford to sign him, will soon be wondering if they can afford not to.

Haaland’s many suitors will have noted not just the goalscoring records that he continues to pillage, but the way he defines the very terms of engagement of any contest in which he features, something which, forgive the stereotype, often happens when big Scandinavian men with scary weapons come charging at you unexpectedly.