Reigning Premier League champions Manchester City kick off the season on Sunday against tough opponents West Ham who finished in 7th place last season.
Pep Guardiola’s men will seek to start the championship off on the right foot and put last Saturday’s defeat in the Community Shield against Liverpool (3-1) behind them as soon as possible. All eyes pending at this premiere will be on the last great signing of the ‘sky blues’, the Norwegian striker Erling Haaland.
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‘I am a player with a hunger for goals’
Out of his Dortmund “comfort zone” and a week after his first competitive match in a Manchester City shirt (3-1 loss to Liverpool), Erling Haaland conveyed calm in the hours before his Premier League debutin an interview with ‘Sky Sports’.
“One of the principles of the game is to get out of your comfort zone, as I have always done and as I like to do because that is how we also develop in the human sphere”he declared.
The price of his transfer (51 million pounds, 62 million dollars) will not be a real weight, as other teams such as Tottenham, who paid 60 million pounds (73 million dollars) in the Brazilian Richarlison. The true weight on the shoulders of the 22-year-old Norwegian will paradoxically be the number of goals scored at Borussia Dortmund in the last three seasons: 86 goals in 89 games.
Will he be able to maintain the same level of effectiveness in the most disputed championship in the world and at the highest levels of the Champions League? That question is what led the Norwegian to cross the English Channel. Despite his youth, Haaland has already played in three countries before: Bryne and Molde in the Norwegian championship, Salzburg in Austria and Borussia Dortmund in Germany.
“I am a player hungry for goals, who gives 100%, who wants to win every game. They are simple things, but important,” he added.
“It will be tough, but it’s all part of the charm of the Premier League, which is the most followed championship in the world,” he concluded.
Time and TV
The match between Manchester City and West Ham will be seen on the ESPN screen, starting at 10:30 am
AFP
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