Manchester City managed to get star striker Erling Haaland to commit his future to the club with a 9.5-year deal earlier this month. The deal will in theory keep the Norwegian there for the best years of his career, until 2034, but reports from Spain believe that Haaland still retains a large degree of control over his future.
Previous reports have claimed that Haaland will be allowed to choose when to depart the Etihad for one of Real Madrid or Paris Saint-Germain, and Marca‘s latest update is that Barcelona are also included in the list of teams that Haaland can exit to. Without a release clause in the contract per se, it is not yet clear what the mechanism for that permission is, referred to only as ‘the small print’.
In addition to the security of the new deal, Haaland will also receive a major wage hike. Already the best-paid player in the Manchester City squad, the 24-year-old will earn €40m per year net. For context, reports in the Spanish capital put Kylian Mbappe’s wages at €15m per annum, albeit not including a hefty signing bonus.
On top of the wage increase, Haaland will also receive the entirety of his image rights. This was cited as a key issue for Mbappe too, and is also worth millions each year, as well as the ability to control where and how Haaland appears in promotional content.
Any move to Spain still seems a long way off if it does eventually happen. While Haaland is still cited as a dream signing for both Barcelona and Real Madrid, it will be some time before the Catalans can afford any deal of the sort. Equally for Real Madrid one of their star forwards would likely need to depart, and for good money, before they would consider signing the imposing number nine.
