From a newfound popularity for “Take Me Home, Country Roads” during the U.S. men’s national team’s run to the Boston Globe’s full page ad thanking Scotland’s Tartan Army, this summer’s World Cup has been a showcase of America’s unique embrace of a sport it generally has a casual relationship with. Few things have taken off the way Haaland has, though. The Norway international, who finished his first World Cup with seven goals as his side reached the quarterfinals, has been the tournament’s breakout star. He was more than a known quality to soccer fans, the 25-year-old already a Premier League and UEFA Champions League winner (you can continue to catch Haaland all season long fighting for Champions League glory on Paramount+)  years before he took the World Cup by storm. He has caught fire in a way few players have, though, despite the best efforts of marketers working on behalf of several of his counterparts – and has done so without their efforts.

For the last few weeks, the world has been having fun with Haaland. He leaves the World Cup as its most viral star, somehow finding the perfect mix of on-field talent and social media savvy, to the point that people flocked to Patti Smith’s Instagram comments to encouragingly assure onlookers that we would see more of a star whose talents needed no further validation before Norway’s first game. There is an affable earnestly in the optimistic tone of these comments, though, much as there was in Haaland’s reflections on a dream first World Cup.    

“It was completely crazy,” he mentioned on Saturday after Norway’s 2-1 loss to England. “It was like a surreal thing and I think it changes me as a person, too. I think I’ve become a bit more known, I would say, and such. And yes, it’s a bit difficult to think about right now when you think about the match and such but it’s pretty crazy to be a part of something completely special. Everyone has told me — people who have played — that you have to experience it and all that. That has been my goal and then you realize now that it’s the biggest thing. It’s completely crazy.”  

It is hard to pinpoint exactly where Haaland’s virality started, but it is undeniable at this point. He started the World cup with 40 million followers on Instagram and is currently up to 65 million, his skill enthralling a host of fans who were otherwise unaware of his incomparable scoring ability. Even after a mixed bag of a season with Manchester City, Haaland was at his best this summer with Norway, offering stark reminders that he almost feels like a goalscoring machine rather than a human on the pitch. His on-field abilities are only one part of the package, though.

“He has physical presence,” Arielle Castillo, a social media consultant who managed City’s U.S. digital operation for several years, told CBS Sports. “The thing that I’ve been saying the whole time is that he has very distinct star quality and aura and it’s not just his physical size but when he comes in a room, you really feel  it, energetically, shift, and I think that is so powerful that it even comes across on TV.”

His playing style suits the jock-like tendencies casual American fans often look for in professional athletes. Haaland offers something for multiple audiences — Castillo described his professional attributes as “cartoonish” in a way that children latch on to, while adults will take pleasure in his sense of humor. Countless group chats, no matter if they are made up of soccer diehards or not, have circulated Haaland’s picture in a cowboy hat after Norway’s win over Ivory Coast in the round of 32, the same way many have caught up to his years-old joke about how he “raw-dogged” a seven-hour flight during City’s preseason tour of the U.S. in 2024.

The virality is new enough, but Castillo mentioned she noticed the tide turning in Haaland’s favor two years ago, when fans were flocking to their preseason stops in New York, Chapel Hill, N.C. and Orlando, Fla.

“When he joined and people who were fans of the club and fans of the Premier League knew he was a physical freak and a special specimen was coming and then 2024, that’s when I started to see little kids screaming, girls screaming,” she mentioned. “Then it was more for Jack Grealish, but that’s when I started to feel something has really, really, really shifted here. The energy of people stalking outside of the hotel, coming to the training sessions, and so I thought at that point, the club won the Champions League, the treble, all that stuff. That’s the pinnacle of it, and then I already thought he was really big, and so it’s been really insane, the last three weeks.”

His playing abilities put him in the tier of Argentina’s Lionel Messi and France’s Kylian Mbappe, Haaland currently just one goal behind the World Cup’s joint top goalscorers as the semifinals await for those two. There’s a simplicity to his backstory, though, one that makes it easy for newcomers to embrace him – like Messi, his personal life is rarely ever tabloid fodder in any meaningful sense. He is, almost boringly, the son of a former soccer player, former Leeds United player Alf-Inge Haaland, who also happens to be really good at the same sport. In an age of reclusive, distant stars, though, Haaland openly has a personality – and one that people seem to gravitate towards quickly.

“When he won the Champions League, he was loving life because I think that emotionally, he still has a lot of ties to his dad’s history in England,” Castillo noted. “He was singing at our staff parties making fun of [Manchester] United. He’s happy to play a little bit of the troll role as well … A lot of [players] are very reserved because every single thing they do gets picked apart, and I feel like he doesn’t have that sense because I feel like his life is just so simple and unproblematic. He’s happy to just have fun.”

For the last few weeks, the world has been having fun with Haaland. He leaves the World Cup as its most viral star, somehow finding the perfect mix of on-field talent and social media savvy, to the point that people flocked to Patti Smith’s Instagram comments to encouragingly assure onlookers that we would see more of a star whose talents needed no further validation before Norway’s first game. There is an affable earnestly in the optimistic tone of these comments, though, much as there was in Haaland’s reflections on a dream first World Cup.