Erling Haaland’s Dad Wanted Him to Be a Pro Golfer, Not a Footballer, and Made Him Play Every Week from Age 10 to 13

The kid who’d rather kick a ball got dragged to the driving range every week for three years. He still has one goal left with the clubs: to beat his dad.

How the Manchester City striker was steered toward golf as a boy — and the one score he’s still trying to settle with his father.

Alfie Haaland, who played for Manchester City, Leeds United and Nottingham Forest, wanted his son on a golf course, not a pitch. Erling’s mother, Gry Marita Braut, was a national champion heptathlete in Norway in the 1990s, which explains the rest of the sporting buffet he was put through as a kid.

“My dad’s biggest dream was for me to become a golfer,” Erling Haaland said in a recent interview. “He made me start playing when I was 10, and I played every week until I was 13. I also tried handball, American football and athletics, but eventually I told my parents, ‘I want to play football.'”

The golf never fully left him. He’s been spotted this month hitting balls off the deck of a yacht off Taormina, Sicily, and says a “good golf episode” is coming soon.

“Now I want to become good,” he said. “One day I want to become better than my father.”

He’s been saying versions of that line for years. “Even then, I was thinking, ‘I want to be better than my father,’ and kept working at it,” he told The Telegraph in October 2023. He now plays for Manchester City, the same club where Alfie ended his career, and turns 26 today — born in England on July 21, 2000, while his dad was on City’s books.

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