Erling Haaland has no regrets over throwing the ball at Arsenal defender Gabriel Magalhaes in Manchester City’s bad-tempered Premier League draw last month.
City rescued a point with a 99th-minute John Stones equaliser after playing almost an hour against ten men. As Stones wheeled away to celebrate, Haaland grabbed the ball from inside the goal and threw it against the back of Gabriel’s head before running away.
The incident went viral, although Gabriel himself downplayed it by telling TNT Sport Brazil: “I don’t even remember this. It’s normal, they were happy after scoring in the last minute.” Now, Haaland has been asked about why he threw the ball, offering a typically-blunt response.
“In the heat of the moment things happened in that game,” he told a press conference while on national duty for Norway. “What happens on the pitch, stays on the pitch. That’s how it is.”
Asked if he regretted the incident, he simply replied: “I don’t regret much in life.”
Haaland was making a rare appearance in a press conference – he has only faced the media in that format three times at City of which only one was in the middle of a season. He is similarly media-shy for Norway as he is often required to conduct post-match flash interviews which take priority due to broadcasting commitments.
He offered a series of short answers, sometimes giving it back to the journalists. At one point he said he would stop for a post-match interview ‘if anyone wants to ask me any interesting questions.’
When asked if he thought about breaking the Norwegian goalscoring record, he simply replied ‘no’, and offered another ‘no comment’ to a question about meeting Cristiano Ronaldo on holiday.
