{"id":4325,"date":"2023-04-09T05:37:25","date_gmt":"2023-04-09T05:37:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/soccer-citys-haaland-on-the\/"},"modified":"2023-04-09T05:41:26","modified_gmt":"2023-04-09T05:41:26","slug":"soccer-citys-haaland-on-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/soccer-citys-haaland-on-the\/","title":{"rendered":"Soccer-City&#8217;s Haaland on the same level as Messi, Ronaldo &#8211; Guardiola"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SOUTHAMPTON, England (Reuters) &#8211;     Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said striker Erling Haaland is of the same calibre as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo after the Norwegian international scored twice in Saturday&#8217;s 4-1 Premier League victory at Southampton.<\/p>\n<p>Haaland scored on a header and remarkable bicycle kick, taking his tally to 44 goals in all competitions this season, with 30 of those coming in the Premier League. <\/p>\n<p>His total is now tied for the most ever by a Premier League player in all competitions in a single campaign, equalling Ruud van Nistelrooy in 2002-03 and Mohamed Salah in 2017-18.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have lived two incredible decades with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, but he is on that level,&#8221; Guardiola told the BBC on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Guardiola was in awe of Haaland&#8217;s execution of his second goal, which he acrobatically volleyed home off a cross from Jack Grealish.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is not easy to pick the ball up in the sky and put it on the grass,&#8221; Guardiola said. &#8220;You can&#8217;t imagine at his height he has this ability. Exceptional goal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 22-year-old, who joined City from Borussia Dortmund, is now four short of the record of 34 goals in a Premier League season set by Alan Shearer and Andy Cole.<\/p>\n<p>City are second in the league with 67 points after 29 games, five behind leaders Arsenal. <\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Manasi Pathak in Bengaluru. Editing by Gerry Doyle)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/soccer-citys-haaland-on-the\/premier-league-southampton-v-manchester-city-4\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3800Y-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3800Y-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/soccer-citys-haaland-on-the\/premier-league-southampton-v-manchester-city-5\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ38010-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ38010-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/soccer-citys-haaland-on-the\/premier-league-southampton-v-manchester-city-6\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3800X-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3800X-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SOUTHAMPTON, England (Reuters) &#8211; Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said striker Erling Haaland is of the same calibre as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo after the Norwegian international scored twice in Saturday&#8217;s 4-1 Premier League victory at Southampton. Haaland scored on a header and remarkable bicycle kick, taking his tally to 44 goals in all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportSportsNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3800Y-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4329,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4325\/revisions\/4329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}