Erling Haaland is still on holiday after a gruelling 2026 FIFA World Cup campaign where he made history with Norway.
The striker struck seven goals to finish third in the golden boot race and led the Vikings to a first-ever quarter final, where they were eliminated by England.
The hard work has earned Haaland the right to skip Manchester City’s pre-season in South Korea, where they’re taking on the likes of Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid.
Instead, the 26-year-old will directly link up with the squad in England before their FA Community Shield season opener against Arsenal on August 16.
Haaland has seen incredible growth in his social media fame too.
With fame coming from not just football fans, Haaland saw himself get yaoi-fied.
The City striker is known for his affectionate male friendships, such as the time he shared an on-field kiss with Phil Foden, but all of it paled in front of the shipping Haaland and Jude Bellingham experienced over the summer.
Memes putting the two former Borussia Dortmund teammates together went massively viral. As fate would have it, the trend even culminated in a meeting of destiny as Bellingham’s brace knocked out the Vikings, but not before Bellingham and Haaland shared a few more endearing moments together.
K-pop fans weren’t left behind as they turned every piece of Haaland’s life into content.
Internet recently saw Haaland in a cat, as the Norwegian played along by tagging himself in the comments on IG.
The Persian feline had their hair rocked back into a knot much like the Viking, the look complete with a Norway kit.
However, great fame comes at a great cost and is not always enjoyable. Particularly in the digital age, where there are enough tools to allow people’s imaginations to run amok.
Haaland recently became the victim, for lack of a better word, to what perhaps can be described as fan art. The concept was as simple and as horrific as it gets – reimagining the Norwegian as Hello Kitty.
The only problem being, Hello Kitty is a fictional cartoon character and as the moniker suggests, has the face of a cat. That includes two ears on top of the whiskered face, complete with a pink bow on the forehead.
Yet, some anonymous artist decided it would be a good idea to place the outline of Hello Kitty’s face on top of a Haaland picture and then fill in the gaps, quite literally.
Nevertheless, the artist painstakingly used the ‘stretch to fill’ feature to practically pull Haaland’s face apart, until it matched the absurd measurements of Kitty’s face.
The cherry on top was replacing the pink bow with one carrying the Norwegian flag colours and design. And of course, three whiskers on each side completed the hideous creation.
Hello Kitty was created in 1974 as a cute feminine feline meant to attract the fascination of pre-teen and teenage girls. Yet, such was the sheer simplicity and beauty of Kitty that she became a worldwide phenom across age groups, ranging from children to their parents and beyond.
Safe to say, the entire essence of Kitty White — as the charcter is officially called — is diametrically opposite to Haaland’s. Definitely when it comes to physicality, given Kitty is a dimunitive delicate character while the Norwegian is 6 foot 5 inch beast with corresponding features.
The final result of mapping Haaland onto Kitty looked straight out of a nightmare, to say the least. The kind of random slop AI creates nowadays on the request of some bizarre prompt, only executed manually with some real god forsaken efforts.
This is one post Haaland definitely won’t be commenting ‘nice’ on. Or maybe he would, given his track record.
— Out Of Context Erling Haaland (@ErlingNoContext) August 3, 2026
Either way, he’ll probably hope much like his fans he never has to come across such artistry again. Unless someone decides to do the funniest thing possible and turn up with a poster of Hello Kitty Haaland, when he next takes the field in Cardiff in less than two weeks.
