What Liverpool could learn from Man City after Erling Haaland’s shock new contract
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Manchester City’s new Erling Haaland contract has shown Liverpool exactly how they should’ve approached their own player negotiations before the matter developed into a crisis. Haaland has signed a bumper new deal with the reigning Premier League champions that will keep him at the Etihad Stadium until the summer of 2034. City are understood to have spent six months working on the nine-and-a-half-year deal, which is worth in excess of £500,000-per-week.
The 25-year-old’s commitment to another decade with City comes as a huge boost to the club given their poor form and uncertainty around their financial charges. Haaland, who joined from Dortmund in the summer of 2022, had been linked with Real Madrid in the past year but the Spanish giants will now have to sign him the hard way if they wish to do so.
And the way in which City tied down one of their best players for the future is an important lesson to rivals and league leaders Liverpool, who still face the daunting possibility of their three most crucial players leaving as free agents this summer.
Haaland’s initial contract was set to expire at the end of the 2026/27 season, with outgoing director of football Txiki Begiristain desperate to tie up the Norwegian’s services before his departure. The former Barcelona man was keen to keep negotiations with Haaland under wraps too, something which Liverpool have not done and paid the price for.
Mohamed Salah signed his latest contract extension with Liverpool in 2022, meaning the club had just under three years to extend his deal further. The Reds may have imagined that their Egyptian talisman’s form would have declined by the time he reached the age of 32, but their lack of decisiveness regarding his future – having not sold him to Al-Hilal in a big-money transfer a year-and-a-half ago – leaves them in their current predicament.
