Where many of world football’s biggest stars spent their childhood and adolescence in ‘fancy’ academies around Europe, Haaland has taken a different path to reach the top.
Jærbuen started his football career at Bryne and played there until 2017. The football environment the 22-year-old was a part of has now been studied by Martin Kjeøen Erikstad. He is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Exercise Science and Physical Education at the University of Agder.
I the article Published in the international journal ‘The Sport Psychologist’, Erikstad and the research team took a deep dive into the football environment in which Haaland grew up and made several interesting discoveries.
And part of the reason Haaland is where he is today, he can probably thank the Bryne football community.
For Erikstad it is clear that Haaland has been part of a unique environment, as well as the fact that personally he has had an extraordinary talent.
– He probably has innate abilities that few people have. But I think Haaland is the result of extremely good conditions in an extremely good environment, he tells Nettavisen.
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– Completely unique
However, Erikstad’s fascination with litter Bryne Haaland had begun before Järbuen started scoring goals in the Premier League. He noted that Bryne’s team has developed a surprising number of good players, as well as being able to take care of the width.
– It started with 40 players at age six and had very few dropouts. So it was unique in the sense that they developed very good footballers and very few quit. And now there are six of them today who are professional footballers. It’s also completely unique, says Erikstad.
Erikstad mentions several factors when explaining why the football environment in which Haaland grew up was so good for the 22-year-old. Overall, he explains that the factors mentioned below contributed to Haaland having an optimal footballing environment at a young age.
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Competent trainers
The Bryne team that Haaland was a part of was coached by a set of parents who had good football skills. There were also trainers who were very good at the relational stuff and who didn’t just focus on anyone but who were incredibly concerned that everyone should be seen.
Alf-Ingve Berntsen has coached the team the most over the years. He was a teacher with pedagogical knowledge on a daily basis as well as having a good coaching background with a UEFA A licence.
– There are very few children’s coaches who have it, Erikstad points out.
Trained little, but with good quality
They trained quite a lot in children’s sports, but what they trained was of good quality and inspired them to be active on their own. It helped that they played an incredible amount of basket football, especially in Jærhallen, which was available 24 hours a day.
At a young age, they focused on development before achievements, which Erikstad says contributes to people also working hard on their own development as they get older.
During matches, they were also keen to give all the players plenty of time to play, so that they weren’t just the best players playing all the time.
– Erling also sat on the bench, and then they rather challenged the best players to take on more responsibility during their time on the pitch. The game, camaraderie, and playing football just for fun at a young age can seem to provide some sort of motivational buffer by the time you reach adolescence.
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Crazy team environment
The gang that Haaland was a part of has been described as a group of 40 good friends who played soccer together, Erikstad says. It was a combination of social welfare, but also that they were serious when they trained.
They also made moves as players got older and more usually quit. This often happens in the transition to youth sports when you start with the first and second team.
– They explained that the other teams divided players into first team and second team, where the second team was not taken seriously. Then they stopped. What the Bryne coaches did was get the players together and ask them if they wanted to practice twice a week or if they wanted to practice four times a week. Then the players themselves made a choice how much they wanted to train. It wasn’t the coach who decided ‘you are good, you train four times a week, you are not that good, you have to play in a reserve team’.
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They were still concerned that there should be a proper arrangement and good quality training, but it has helped the group keep the joy of football and keep playing.
– And Erling and the others could still ride with their friends while they train and share a locker room, because they still train at the same time, says Erikstad.
Focus on good behavior
Haaland has already received attention twice this season for her good behavior through videos that have gone viral.
The first time around, there was a clip of the 22-year-old neatly folding his shirt before handing it to a Manchester City fan, while his teammates simply tossed them away, explained.
The second when in the middle of an attack he picked up the spray that the referee had dropped and gave it to him during the match.
This focus on behavior, on being good to each other, was something Bryne cared about a lot.
They asked a lot in terms of behavior by being nice to each other, but also to opponents and referees, says Erikstad.
And perhaps the reason so many people were impressed by the 22-year-old’s good behavior may stem from his background at Bryne.
– In this sense, it is perhaps not entirely accidental that Erling has acquired such attention. Because he at least he’s been in an environment where he’s been very conscious. They have developed good footballers, but they have also developed good people.
Football culture in Bryne
Bryne is a football ground and they have a football culture. It’s natural to play football when you’re from there, but they also have players who have been successful at the top level, explains Erikstad.
Haaland and the others had models that came from the same place, showing that it was possible to come from Bryne, get very good, and reach the highest level.
– This Bryne team had some close role models eg Alfie Haaland who had played professionally and in the Premier League. Something that proves you can come from here and be successful.
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– That was pretty much what we were doing
Another person other than Haaland who was part of this football milieu at Bryne was Adrian Berntsen, who is the son of the aforementioned Alf-Ingve Berntsen.
He believes that the fact that many talented players have trained a lot together and spent a lot of time in football is why they have had such a good environment.
– We were the same age and trained a lot as a team. It became a culture throughout the gang that we used to spend a lot of time playing football. The fact that so many good people trained at the same time was probably an advantage, he tells Nettavisen.
– It was more or less what we did at Bryne in our spare time, we played football, he adds.
Berntsen currently plays for Notodden in the 2nd division. Remember well that they spend a lot of time in Jærhallen.
– Mostly every Saturday and Sunday we met there at 10-11 and stayed there for the whole day. At the time it was mostly about competition and play, and there were probably as many high-end players as there were who went on to become elite players, he says.
Berntsen is also aware that the group he and Haaland were in at Bryne did some things slightly differently from the others, and he particularly thinks he wasn’t the best of the team when the opportunity arose.
– Perhaps that was easier to achieve as there were so many good ones, but at the age of 13 we had two teams in the elite division and two in the wider division for a period. We distributed it a little differently than the others, she says.
Erikstad concludes that Haaland was part of a near optimal development environment during his years at Bryne.
– That combination with optimal conditions in an optimal development environment is probably what helps explain one of the best players in the world.
