Manchester City have tied down Erling Haaland for another decade while rivals Liverpool still risk losing their three best players on free transfers at the end of this season
Manchester City’s new Erling Haaland contract has shown Liverpool exactly how they should’ve approached their own player negotiations before the matter developed into a crisis.
Haaland has signed a bumper new deal with the reigning Premier League champions that will keep him at the Etihad Stadium until the summer of 2034. City are understood to have spent six months working on the nine-and-a-half-year deal, which is worth in excess of £500,000-per-week.
Given their dismal performance and financial charges, the 25-year-old’s pledge to stay with City for another ten years is a major boost to the team. Real Madrid has been connected to Haaland, who arrived from Dortmund in the summer of 2022, for the past year, but if the Spanish powerhouses want to get him, they will now have to do it the hard way.
Additionally, rivals and league leaders Liverpool, who still face the terrifying prospect of losing their three most important players as free agents this summer, can learn a valuable lesson from City’s decision to lock down one of their greatest players for the future.
Txiki Begiristain, the departing director of football, was anxious to lock down the Norwegian’s services before he left, as Haaland’s original contract was scheduled to expire at the end of the 2026–2027 season. The former Barcelona player also wanted to keep talks with Haaland secret, something Liverpool has failed to do and paid for.
In 2022, Mohamed Salah signed his most recent contract extension with Liverpool, giving the team less than three years to extend his agreement. The Reds may have thought that by the time their Egyptian talisman turned thirty-two, his form would have deteriorated, but their inaction about his future—not selling him to Al-Hilal in a high-profile deal a year and a half ago—leaves them
The former technical director and sports director of Liverpool, Julian Ward, ought to have handled that better before giving his successor, Richard Hughes, a challenging assignment. Preventing the ensuing media frenzy is another advantage of starting contract discussions early.
Approaching the end of the aforementioned duo and Virgil van Dijk’s contracts means there has been increased speculation linking them to other clubs when it could have been prevented.
New head coach Arne Slot has had the unenviable task of taking questions week-in week-out over their futures, when his priority should be winning the league among other silverware. City’s proactiveness, meanwhile, allows Pep Guardiola – or his eventual successor – to avoid such uncomfortable questions.
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