Erling Haaland’s Advice to Single People: Get Off Your Phone, Go Outside, and Stop Hunting for a Girlfriend
“I was single for quite a while myself. If I have any advice? It’s to get out and socialize. Meet people and get to know people. From my experience, you find your girlfriend when you least expect it. If you’re always looking for a girlfriend, you’ll never find one.” — Erling Haaland
The advice comes from a guy whose only known relationship started when the woman slid into his DMs. Haaland told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that his girlfriend, Isabel Haugseng Johansen, messaged him first. “She sent me a message. She played in the same club as me, Bryne. So she checked me out, I didn’t check her out,” he said, grinning.
The two grew up in the same small Norwegian town of Bryne and both played for Bryne FK’s youth setup, though Haaland has admitted he doesn’t remember their early meetings well and she does. Johansen played for the women’s team before stepping away from the sport. “To be honest, I wasn’t the best with dribbling and stuff. I was more with speed. I was running. I miss it a lot,” she said in an October 2025 YouTube video with Haaland. He’s called the whole thing fate, and said it’s nice she understands football because she played it herself.
They reconnected as adults around 2021, after he’d already moved to Borussia Dortmund, and roughly five years on they’re parents to a son born in December 2024, a birth Haaland rushed to from a match to be there for. He’s told the AP that fatherhood has actually sharpened him: “with a kid, it makes me even better because I actually disconnect more than ever…I don’t think of football at all.” Their downtime is deliberately low-key: playing Minecraft, eating kebabs from their hometown, quiet nights in.
Johansen has slowly stepped further into public life this year, landing her first magazine cover with Norway’s KK in June 2026 and signing as an ambassador for jewelry brand Langgaard, with her own collection due in fall 2026. She’s been a familiar face in the stands throughout Norway’s World Cup run, and after the July 5 win over Brazil at MetLife she posted a Story to Haaland: “I’m so incredibly proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished. You’ve worked hard, never given up, and truly deserve this.”
Haaland has joked he might serve kebabs from their hometown at their future wedding.
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