Erling Haaland — the miracle man of Bryne

The indoor football turf at Bryne FK greets you with a massive picture pasted right behind the goal. Two retired school teachers point to the white text printed in bold in Norwegian.

- Rutvick Mehta

"Me ska så fotballglede, dryka talent, og hausta mirakler." The teachers take turns translating it to English, and each voice carries unmistakable heft.

"We will sow joy of football, nurture talent, harvest miracles." Erling Haaland, the face screaming out of that picture, is the miracle of Bryne.

They may not have seen it coming then, but they talk of visual evidence now. Espen Undheim, coach at Bryne FK for 25 years who worked with Haaland from age 8 to 15, brings up two videos saved in his home computer.

Making of a boy wonder The first is of a 10-year-old Haaland's run inside the box as "one of the smallest boys". Undheim gets flashes of that when he watches some of Haaland's runs now as one of world football's tallest figures and prolific goalscorers.

The second is of Undheim speaking to Haaland after a training session that the kid thought did not go well because he could score just one goal.

"But you served your team players," Undheim recalled the chat.

"He said: that's not good enough. I had to be scoring at least 4-5 goals." Those two videos encapsulate Undheim's early impressions of a kid who, two decades on, has grown to become among the world's best strikers moving from Bryne to Molde, Salzburg, Borussia Dortmund and now Manchester City.