The Manchester City forward has lopped off his Viking locks as we head out of summer. Whether it comes with any performance-enhancing benefits, however, is yet to be seen.
New season, new trim! After a yacht-heavy Euro summer, Erling Haaland is back on the pitch for Manchester City. If you dedicated 90 minutes of your life watching Man City vs Bournemouth yesterday, then you might have noticed something a little different. Those long luscious blonde locks were no more. Instead, he welcomed the new season with a sharp recruit-style buzz cut. And you know what, fair play.
The Norwegian forward, whose formerly long hair and six foot five inch height saw him likened to viking, documented the trim on his YouTube channel. In the short video clip posted on Sunday, he cycles through a list of his old hairstyles, which include a quiff from his younger days and a Jack Grealish slick back undercut from his time at Borussia Dortmund (held off his face with a hair band, of course). And ahead of the public reveal, a lucky few got the heads up, including Jack Grealish, Pep Guardiola, and Noel Gallagher.
Okay, so now for the details. It looks like Haaland has gone for a Grade 2 all over, which means that there’s a little bit of hair left on top, but all cut to a similar close-cut length. It’s a clean, short trim, helping put the focus on your cheekbones and jawline, which if you’re packing chiselled features like Haaland, is a pretty flattering trim. So take note, fellas.
As for why he’s chopped the locks? Taking to X to hard launch his new hair, the footie player captioned the post “new season, new hair”. And going from long, lengthy strands to something drastically short, is quite the gear shift. The buzz is a low-maintenance haircut that doesn’t require too much heavy styling – you just get up and go. Manchester City lost out on a Premier League win to Arsenal last season, and conceded a four-season winning streak to Liverpool the season before. During both 2023-24 and 2025-26, Haaland’s hair was long and full.
To add to things, Pep Guardiola, has left after helming the club for ten years and achieving six Premier League titles (four in a row from 2020-2024), five League Cups, three FA Cups, and leading them to their first UEFA Champions League win. Plus, Rodri has headed to Barcelona and former Club captain Bernardo Silva has left for Real Madrid, while John Stones has made the move to Inter Milan. Haaland is one of City’s top goalscorers (winning three Golden Boots including for the 2025/26 season after scoring 27 goals and breaking the Premier League goal-scoring record with 36 goals in the 2022/23 season), so a fuss-free trim might be a way for him to dial in as the team finds its footing again. Or, maybe it’s not that deep – this is the guy who pairs his mega Dolce and Gabbana Sicily bag with £560 taxidermied whiskey-drinking racoons, after all.
Whether the buzz cut will provide any on pitch advantages are yet to be seen (Zlatan Ibrahimović told Haaland not to cut his hair earlier this year, because that’s where the power comes from). In yesterday’s game against Bournemouth, Haaland didn’t score. So maybe it will take a bit of getting used to. But with a razor sharp trim, Haaland looks set to dial in.
