With yesterday’s brace against Sevilla, Erling Haaland has hit the net 18 times in his first 13 matches in Champions League and has the best scoring average in the history of the competition. However, his career could have gone much differently as he was in advanced talks to join Juventus back in 2017, transfer market expert Fabrizio Romano reported.
He was 17 at the time but he had already begun to make some noise with his performances at Molde. Near the end of the year, he flew to Turin too meet the whole Bianconeri brass, visited the training center and watched a game at the Stadium with a team-branded hat on.
Molde were asking for €4M for the striker, but the deal fell through both for the fee, as he had not fully broken out yet, but also because Haaland did not want to be loaned out to other Serie A teams after signing with Juventus.
The forward blossomed in 2018 and was purchased by Salzburg for €8M in August and was allowed them to complete the season in Norway. He finished with 12 goals and 4 assists in 25 appearances in Eliteserien before making the jump to the Austrian side. He lasted only a year there as Borussia Dortmund paid his €20M release clause and brought him over in December of 2019.
Like every top team across Europe, Juventus are interested and have a good relationship with his agent Mino Raiola, who represents Matthijs De Ligt, but the competition will be extremely fierce and deep-pocketed and his €75M buy-out clause can be activated only in 2022, so Borussia Dortmund will try to hold onto him until then.