Much ado about Haaland, nothing

I feel like I should write something about Erling Haaland, since that’s all Twitter seems to be talking about these days (not to mention the millions of transfer podcasts, experts, and ITKs), at least whenever they’re not talking about how “it’s coming home” — not sure which is more annoying, to be quite honest.

But while football may in fact come home come Sunday, when England take on Italy in the Euro 2020 final, Haaland remains highly unlikely to come “home” to Chelsea. That situation has not changed at all since January, when this idea was first mooted in any serious rumor. If anything, it’s gotten even tougher with Borussia Dortmund already making their one big deal of the summer in Jadon Sancho’s £73m transfer to Manchester United, and with the slimy prospect of having to deal with Mino Raiola souring any and all such intentions on our part (or any team’s part, surely). Then again, we're all just pawns in agents' games.

The big idea of Chelsea trying to get a jump on rivals by engineering a transfer this summer rather than next, when Haaland’s supposed (and semi-reasonable) release clause kicks in, is certainly a sound theory and a great strategy, but we appear to be making no serious inroads with it. In fact, it’s become quite impressive how all the transfer content producers keep rehashing the same “information”, really taking all the “new” out of news. The churn is real, and overwhelming.

And so we get constant “updates” that are not updating anything in any meaningful fashion, but make headline news because this is what drives clicks, hits, eyeballs. Many make a good living out of this, including Fabrizio Romano, who’s turned it into an artform. Antonio Rüdiger would be proud of this level of #hustle.

One of Romano’s latest, as a guest on some random podcast, is that Thomas Tuchel is “in love” with Haaland — join the queue, buddy — and that Chelsea just might submit a “crazy bid” in the region of €150m. But none of this actually means anything since Romano himself is just “curious” as to what Chelsea might do — i.e. he has no actual idea. I picked this one, but there are hundreds of other such “updates” anywhere you look.

This is hardly a new phenomenon of course. I was once suckered in just the same, before my Edinson Cavani dreams were crushed like a Tancredi BOOM. (Before "Here we go" there was the "BOOM".)

And of course until the season actually starts, there is always a chance that Chelsea actually pull off this transfer — that hope is what drives these dreams after all. We do have the money, we do have the ambition, and we do have a proven method to this madness.

But for now, there’s nothing actually happening. That is the only thing that anyone can say with any certainty. And while that’s perhaps a bit concerning, with Chelsea seemingly happy to simply rest on our laurels and make that familiar mistake, we also still have a little over month to go until the start of the season (August 11, UEFA Super Cup), and almost two whole months left of the transfer window (September 2). Lots of time; no need to panic.