Fabio Capello believes Jude Bellingham is a superior player to Erling Haaland and possesses more “technical quality” than his former Borussia Dortmund teammate.
Despite the remarkable rise of Haaland over the years, it seems like several fans and pundits alike tend to feel he still has plenty of limitations to his game.
The Manchester City striker is perhaps the only out-and-out goalscorer in an era where top-quality strikers have become a rarity.
Fabio Capello says Jude Bellingham is better than Erling Haaland
It is common practice to hone in on a player’s flaws who seems to dominate football from a young age to discover which area of the game he struggles in.
Ever since joining Pep Guardiola’s side in 2022, the 23-year-old has faced such treatment, especially as all eyes are on him as he plays for the best team in the most-watched league in the world.
So much so that Fabio Capello believes Jude Bellingham will be Kylian Mbappe’s biggest rival in this generation as opposed to Erling Haaland, who he feels is an inferior player to the Englishman.
“Yes. For me, the two footballers who are going to fight like [Lionel] Messi and Cristiano [Ronaldo] did are [Kylian] Mbappe and Bellingham.”
“The two of them have more technical quality than [Erling] Haaland. The Norwegian is a tremendous forward, an animal, and he is also good technically, a goal-scoring man. But Mbappe and Bellingham have it all: goals, technical quality, dribbling…Haaland is an area player, the best as a pure forward, as [a] number 9″, he told MARCA.
Erling Haaland has strengths that neither have
The strengths that Erling Haaland possesses which Fabio Capello voiced are those that neither Jude Bellingham nor Kylian Mbappe have in their artilleries.
Bellingham, in particular, is not the generational goalscorer that Haaland is and while he is a supreme athlete, the latter seems like a genetic freak with his blend of superhuman strength and sprinter-like pace.
Similarly, the Norwegian can singlehandedly dominate a backline with the help of such attributes, as was the case during City’s 4-1 thrashing of Arsenal last season, as he also showed that his hold-up play and technical security can become consistently elite.
On days when Haaland is quiet, his world-class movement and positioning allow him to break defences’ hearts by finding a way to put the ball in the back of the net.
Jude Bellingham is one of the best in the business but to dismiss Erling Haaland as Kylian Mbappe’s rival in his favour would be a stretch.
