Erling Haaland: The Most Viral Footballer of the World Cup
Erling Haaland is chasing the Golden Boot at this World Cup, but he has already wrapped up another title. He is the tournament’s most viral footballer, the striker who has turned a global finals into his own rolling social-media show.
He arrived with a ready-made fanbase: an entire nation in Norway and the blue half of Manchester already besotted. Leeds has claimed him for years as well – he was born there while his father Alf-Inge Haaland patrolled midfield for Leeds United, and he grew up following the Yorkshire club.
Now the rest of the planet has joined in.
A World Cup star on the pitch – and on every screen
As Norway march into the quarter-finals, Haaland’s goals have mattered, but his off-field presence has detonated. In the first week of July, “Haaland” crashed into the UK’s overall top 10 TikTok platform searches, with interest surging by more than 300% week on week. No player at this World Cup was searched more during that spell.
The curiosity runs deeper than simple name checks. Searches for “Haaland best moments” rocketed by 1,300% in the same period. Since the tournament kicked off, fans have pumped out more than 14,000 #Haaland and #ErlingHaaland posts combined, an almost 500% month-on-month jump.
The numbers are huge, yet they also show the size of the mountain. Across social media there are 1.4 million posts about him in total. #Messi stands at 25 million. #Ronaldo at 22.3 million. Haaland is exploding, but he is still chasing two giants of the game and the internet.
Santa suits, Shrek selfies and “raw dogging” flights
This is not a sudden reinvention. Haaland has been building this digital persona for a while.
Last Christmas, he dressed as Santa Claus in Manchester for a YouTube video, wandering the city in full costume and handing out presents to children. On Instagram, he has long veered between self-parody and deadpan absurdity. One story, in which he joked about “raw dogging” a flight – no food, no water, no entertainment – spread at light speed.
During the World Cup, his feeds have gone into overdrive. Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat – each has become a stage. He has 4.7 million subscribers on Snapchat alone, and fans have been flocking there as eagerly as they do to his goals.
Haaland himself leans into the chaos. When an Instagram user posted a photo of a green onion with the caption, “Am I losing it or does this green onion look like Haaland?”, the striker replied with a meme of a dog hurriedly winding up its car window – the universal signal for ducking out of view.
His Instagram following has ballooned from 40 million to 60 million during the tournament, the fastest growth among the game’s biggest names. Since the World Cup began, his Reels have racked up more than 683 million views.
The content is relentless and deliberately ridiculous. A mocked-up selfie with Shrek, captioned “Selfie with my twin.” A snap of him undercover as a tourist in New York, hiding behind a baseball cap and sunglasses. A shopping trip in Texas where the Viking helmet gives way to a cowboy hat.
Even Google has joined the act: type his name into the search bar and an animation of rowers in Viking helmets glides across the screen.
Viral for more than memes
It is not all jokes and filters. Clips of Haaland showing quiet respect have also cut through.
One video that spread widely shows him carefully folding his shirt and handing it to a kit man, while other players dump theirs on the floor. It is a small gesture, but in a sport where every detail is dissected, it landed.
His friendship with former Borussia Dortmund teammate Jude Bellingham has become its own subplot. Their bond has lit up timelines, with some fans likening them to the rival hockey players from HBO’s Heated Rivalry as Norway prepare to face England on Saturday.
The Haaland effect has pulled Bellingham along with it. There are 1.3 million TikTok posts about the England midfielder – a huge number that dwarfs those about England captain Harry Kane, who sits at 277,600.
For many, this World Cup has been an introduction. An 18-year-old TikTok creator from the Netherlands, whose video about Haaland and Bellingham has been shared more than 100,000 times, admitted she “didn’t know Haaland before this World Cup”. She usually only tunes in when her country plays at World Cups or Uefa Euros. This time, her For You page was flooded.
Haaland’s “funny moments” and his Snapchat stories hooked her. She talked about liking his “vibe” and the “bromance” with Bellingham – and that was enough to turn her into a creator of viral Haaland content herself.
A lookalike, and a mirror
The phenomenon has even created stars in its orbit. Russian model Anastasia Kostromitina found herself thrust into the spotlight after her mother posted a video of her mimicking Haaland’s poses, following comments about how much she resembles him.
Long blond hair, piercing blue eyes, towering frame – the comparisons came quickly. Kostromitina has taken it in good humour, calling the likeness “not bad at all”.
“At first, when people compared me to him I was a little bit confused,” she said. “But then I realised that being compared to such an amazing athlete is not offensive at all.” She praised his humility as well as his ability, saying he “seems really humble and, of course, he’s a great athlete”.
“We’ve seen this for years”
Back in Manchester, there is a sense that the rest of the world is only now catching up.
For City fans, this is familiar territory. Dante Friend from the 1894 fan group calls him “a great asset for our club”, but the connection runs deeper than goals and trophies. Haaland is present in their online spaces, following fan accounts, engaging behind the scenes, making supporters feel he is “one of us”.
Kevin Parker, general secretary of Manchester City’s official supporters club, puts it bluntly: Haaland is “an unbelievable footballer, right up there with the best strikers, goalscorers in the world”, but City fans have long seen him as “a different sort of footballer”.
Not in terms of talent. In terms of personality.
“He just seems a genuinely likable sort of guy,” Parker says. With the World Cup beaming his every move into homes worldwide, others are now seeing what City fans have watched for three seasons. For Parker, the timing is perfect. In a tournament dogged by criticism of Fifa and off-field decisions, Haaland “gives football such a positive vibe… everything that Erling does, it’s just positive, positive.”
Howard Cohen, chair of the Manchester City Disabled Supporters Association, remembers the early narratives when Haaland arrived in England. Some coverage painted him as quiet, maybe even withdrawn. That image has not survived contact with reality.
“He’s really come out of his shell very quickly,” Cohen says. “He was clearly never that sort of quiet, reserved figure in reality, and he doesn’t take himself too seriously.” For Cohen, that matters in modern football: a superstar who can “have a laugh with everybody and enjoy himself” feels rare.
Haaland is now picking up supporters “around the world” and, crucially, “providing entertainment for people”. Goals, memes, small acts of kindness – it all feeds into the same current.
That, Cohen points out, is what football should be about. The question now is how far this blend of ruthless finishing and unfiltered humanity can carry him, not just through this World Cup, but through an era that seems ready to build itself around his name.
