Erling Haaland stands at 6 feet, 5 inches, an intimidating force who can make fellow soccer players look tiny in stature and talent. Scoring seven goals across four World Cup matches entering Saturday, the Norwegian player has been described as a machine. But if you ask some loyal new fans, he’s also a favorite meme.
Haaland has become a social media phenomenon, with his own posts and memes from others turning even football novices into diehard fans.
His domineering physical appearance coupled with his goofy online persona have contributed to the craze. Fans remark on his flowing blond mane, color-coordinated hair ties and playful posts like a Snapchat-filtered selfie in which he proclaimed Shrek his “twin.”
The contrast between his strength and skill on the field and his softer, looser online presence has also subjected him to the “babygirl” treatment online. That term is used frequently by fans of endearing male celebrities or characters who come across as sensitive, caring or vulnerable.
Haaland is emblematic of a broader embrace of football players as pop culture figures, driven in large part by how they present themselves off the pitch.
Quirky personality
Haaland is being catapulted into a fame even more intense than he had already known as the Premier League's top scorer. This moment boils down to the pairing of elite skills with quirky personality, Wilson said.
“Him being really, really talented — that’s the first pillar of it all. And then you find out that he’s 25 years old and he’s probably the most Gen Z athlete in the World Cup,” Sarah Wilson, a baseball content creator in New York, told The Associated Press, noting his use of Snapchat and goofy filters in photos online.
Many are thinking, “‘Wow, I love that guy, he’s hilarious. Now he’s my new favorite player,’ which is exactly what happened with me,” she added.
Haaland’s expressive reactions on the pitch and his unique appearance have spawned hundreds of memes. He’s leaned into this virality, posting cheeky selfies on Instagram, uploading long-form vlogs on YouTube and interacting with fans on his public Snapchat stories, often poking fun at himself.
After scoring two goals to knock out Brazil, he posted a smug selfie from the locker room with the caption, “Well well well.” When an Instagram video with nearly 100 million views likened his appearance to a green onion — its wiry roots standing in as his hair — Haaland responded in the comments with a side-eyeing dog GIF. When Google added a Viking row animation to his search results, Haaland wrote on X, “One thing to do today... search my name on Google,” with a winking emoji.
Haaland said in a team news conference on Thursday that he's enjoyed being embraced in the US.
“I think it’s a good thing because I like the Americans. I think they are kind of hilarious as well. They are funny. I like the way they are,” he said. “I think it's just good and honestly, on every single thing, the World Cup so far here has been amazing.”
Sports are a “cultural force,” one on par with politics, said Jeffrey Kassing, an Arizona State University professor who has studied fans' and athletes' social media use. It’s natural that Haaland has “crossed over” into non-football audiences, he said. A song from his youth has gone viral. A lookalike contest is in the offing. Even dogs are sporting blond wigs.
“There used to be a whole lot of gatekeeping that would happen with athletes; you would only ever hear from athletes maybe in an interview or in a press conference,” Kassing said.
Haaland is evidence of how players have much more control in shaping their image now, he added.
Fans also try to ‘shape the perception’ of their favorite players
Fans' access to athletes contributes to what is called a parasocial relationship, defined by one-way knowing, said Gayle Stever, a professor at Empire State University who has studied the dynamics between celebrities and fans for decades. Haaland’s fans feel like they know him on a personal level, but he doesn’t know the nearly 60 million people who follow him on Instagram alone.
The majority of parasocial relationships are “positive, healthy and normal,” Stever said. Only a small percentage of people take it to the extreme, she said.
Skyla Clarke, a 19-year-old sports management student in Brisbane, Australia — and lifelong football fan — says she's seen that uglier side rear its head; attacks on players after poor performances, and even unprovoked hate toward athletes’ wives and partners are not uncommon.
Haaland himself called AI-generated content of players a “bit scary.” But he noted in Norwegian that the attention on the team and its traditions — the rowing cheer, for example — is a sign of praise.
“Usually if it’s like that, it means that you’re doing something right, and that your country is doing something right,” Haaland said.
Even healthy parasocial dynamics can seem unusual to those uninitiated in internet culture. Haaland is not the only player whose persona has blown up on social media.
Fans have described feeling “maternal” toward Luka Modric — especially after Croatia’s elimination in the 40-year-old's final international game. Modric is a “special case” whose difficult upbringing amid Yugoslavia's dissolution plays into how fans characterize him online, Clarke said. Some will incorporate childhood photos of him into their content, creating “a deeper appreciation for him as a player,” she added. Clarke's TikTok video about Modric’s potential retirement reached hundreds of thousands of viewers in a matter of days.
Modric himself has a rather tame social media presence, especially compared with Haaland, but Kassing noted fans “take it upon themselves to try to shape the perception” of those with whom they develop a parasocial attachment. In Modric and Haaland’s cases, some do this by overlaying bows and hearts on their images.
