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Why Erling Haaland Wore a Black Armband When Rest of His MCFC Teammates Didn’t

Erling Haaland, Manchester City, Norway National Football Team, Premier League

Erling Haaland stepped out for Manchester City’s Premier League opener against Crystal Palace wearing a black armband, while none of his City teammates did the same. It wasn’t a club gesture, it was a personal and national one.

The armband was in tribute to King Harald V of Norway, who died on Friday, August 28, 2026, at Oslo University Hospital, at the age of 89, after being hospitalized with a rare blood condition. Following an official appeal to the Premier League, Norwegian players across the league, not just at Manchester City, were given approval to wear black armbands during that weekend’s fixtures as a mark of national mourning.

That’s why Haaland’s armband stood out against his own teammates but wasn’t unique to him alone; Crystal Palace’s Jørgen Strand Larsen, also Norwegian, wore one too, on the opposing side of the same match.

For Haaland, the tribute carried real personal weight. He had previously met King Harald V in person at the Royal Palace in Oslo, where the King hosted a reception celebrating Norway’s historic World Cup run.

Before kickoff at Selhurst Park, Haaland posted a message online: “Rest in peace, King Harald. Thank you for everything you meant to Norway. It was an honour to meet you.”

He followed it with a shorter, more personal post after the match: “Norway in my heart tonight.”

According to details shared in a tweet, King Harald’s connection to sport went back decades before his reign.

As a young prince, he developed a genuine passion for sailing and competed for Norway at three separate Olympic Games, Tokyo 1964, Mexico City 1968, and Munich 1972, competing under the formal title “His Royal Highness the Crown Prince” at the time.

He reportedly didn’t announce the definitive end of his sailing career until 2022, at the age of 85. In 1968, he married Sonja Haraldsen, a commoner, a relationship that stirred controversy at the time but one the public eventually came to embrace.

He was a cousin of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, and ascended the Norwegian throne in 1991 following his father’s death, going on to modernize the monarchy by giving media interviews and publishing financial reports, unusual moves for a royal family at the time.

The same tweet noted that around a month and a half before his death, at 89 years old, Harald received the Norwegian national football team at his residence following their World Cup success, with roughly 100,000 Norwegians gathering outside the palace to celebrate, a moment described as one of his final public joys.

Another tweet circulating after his death pointed to a smaller, more unexpected detail: King Harald had reportedly followed Tottenham Hotspur since his student days in London in the early 1960s, to the point that Norway’s Spurs supporters club gifted him a Tottenham yearbook, reportedly dating back to 1906, for his 70th birthday.

For Haaland, though, the moment on the pitch spoke for itself. A black armband, a Norwegian king he’d once met in person, and a match where he ended up making a bit of history of his own, all coming together on the same afternoon.

Haaland scored a brace in a 4-1 win at Selhurst Park, opening the scoring with a looping header in the 17th minute that also happened to be Manchester City’s 2,000th goal in Premier League history. Rayan Cherki added a brace of his own as City made a statement start to the season.

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