The Haaland Effect: Why Being Fully Yourself May Be the Most Powerful Form of Influence

During the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Erling Haaland became far more than Norway’s star striker. (Go Norway!)

His football created the initial story. Haaland scored seven goals across Norway’s first four matches and helped take the country to its first World Cup quarter-final in decades. Yet sporting excellence alone cannot explain why people who had barely followed football suddenly began purchasing Norway shirts, sharing Haaland memes everywhere and talking about him as though he were the person they most wanted to befriend.

The world was not simply watching an exceptional footballer.

It became emotionally attached to an unusually unguarded human being.

Haaland’s real influence came from a rare combination: he was extraordinary without behaving as though he needed to appear perfect. He was intimidating on the field, playful away from it, seemingly rather unusual, comfortable with being laughed at and seemingly uninterested in sanding down the parts of himself that did not resemble the traditional image of a global sporting superstar.

And in doing so, he gave other people permission to relax.

Performance earned the attention. Warmth earned the affection.

Research suggests that we tend to evaluate people through two primary dimensions: competence and warmth.

Competence answers: Can this person do what they claim to do?

Warmth answers: Are their intentions safe, friendly and trustworthy?

Researchers Susan Fiske, Amy Cuddy and Peter Glick have found these dimensions repeatedly appearing across cultures and social settings. Competence without warmth may produce respect, but it can also create distance or intimidation. Warmth without competence may make someone pleasant, but not necessarily influential. Haaland possessed both at once.

On the field, he looked almost superhuman: physically imposing, intensely focused and capable of producing results at the highest level.

Away from it, he posted filtered selfies, compared himself to fictional cartoons, responded to jokes about his hair and published a gloriously understated “Well well well” after Norway defeated Brazil. An Instagram video comparing his ponytail to the roots of a green onion approached 100 million views, and rather than defending his appearance, he responded with a side-eyeing dog GIF.

The football established his authority.

The playfulness told the audience that his authority was not a threat.

That is one reason people did not merely admire Haaland. They felt comfortable with him.

The contrast made him globally irresistible

Haaland’s personality worked partly because it appeared to contradict his physical and professional image.

He is a 6-foot-5 elite striker who looks capable of flattening an entire defensive line. Yet online, he behaves like an ordinary 25-year-old sending strange Snapchat photos to his friends.

That contrast creates what could be described as a kind of psychological surprise. The brain notices people who disrupt its predictions. We expect the imposing global athlete to be polished, controlled and highly managed. When that same person behaves with silliness, innocence or self-deprecation, we pay closer attention because the categories no longer fit neatly.

A classic social-psych finding known as the pratfall effect found that an already highly competent person could become more likeable after displaying a harmless imperfection. The imperfection humanises someone who might otherwise appear unreachable. Haaland’s behaviour is not a literal pratfall, but the same underlying mechanism helps explain his appeal: the more extraordinary his football became, the more endearing his ordinary weirdness appeared.

His contradictions were the exact opposite to a branding problem. They were the reason people remembered him.

He did not resist the joke, so the joke became affection

Public figures often make themselves less relatable by attempting to control every interpretation of their image.

Haaland did something different. He allowed the audience to play along.

People compared his hair to vegetables, recirculated an old rap song, made edits of his friendship with Jude Bellingham and turned his facial expressions into memes. Instead of behaving as though this attention diminished his status, Haaland frequently acknowledged it, responded to it or joined the joke himself.

That changed the relationship between Haaland and the public.

The audience was no longer simply consuming a carefully produced and curated celebrity identity. It was helping to create the cultural story around him.

Each meme became a small social interaction. Each inside joke gave another person a way to enter the community. You did not need to understand football tactics or know Norway’s complete playing history. You only needed to understand the green onion, the hair tie, the “Well well well” selfie or the Viking rowing celebration.

He became highly accessible without becoming ordinary.

His authenticity came from congruence - not oversharing

Authenticity is often misunderstood as revealing everything, constantly discussing personal struggles or producing deliberately “raw” content.

That is not necessarily what happened with Haaland.

What people appeared to respond to was congruence: the sense that the person seen online, in interviews, with teammates and on the pitch belonged to the same underlying personality.

People from his hometown have described him as funny, energetic, highly focused and grounded from childhood. His former coach remembered the same smiling, passionate and goal-scoring personality that the public sees now. That consistency makes his present behaviour feel less like a campaign constructed for the World Cup and more like an amplification of who he has always been.

Real authenticity is not the absence of privacy.

It is the absence of obvious contradiction between the identity being presented and the person’s repeated behaviour.

Haaland did not have to continually announce that he was authentic. People inferred it because his eccentricity remained consistent even when the size of the audience changed.

He created the feeling of friendship

Social media allows audiences to develop what is known as parasocial relationships: one-sided but emotionally meaningful feelings of familiarity with a public figure.

Haaland’s informal selfies, reactions, humour and direct communication created the impression that audiences were seeing moments that might ordinarily be exchanged between friends. Fans knew intellectually that they did not personally know him, but the style of communication reduced the emotional distance between superstar and supporter. The Associated Press reported that even people new to football began describing him with intense affection and searching for his Norway jersey.

However, his relatability was not based on pretending that every follower was his closest friend.

It came from giving people enough genuine personality to form their own sense of connection.

People did not merely think, I enjoy watching him.

They began thinking, I understand him. I would probably like him. I think he would be fun to know.

That is a far deeper level of influence than visibility.

He was different, but his difference did not exclude anyone

The more I looked into what the magnetic response from the world this world cup, the more I thought about the theory of optimal distinctiveness -This proposes that people are drawn to identities that balance two needs: the desire to belong and the desire to remain individual.

Haaland embodied that tension particularly well. He was unmistakably distinctive — the height, blond hair, ponytail, expressions, Norwegian identity, meditation celebration and unusual online personality made him instantly recognisable. At the same time, his humour and lack of pretension made him emotionally familiar.

He was different enough to be fascinating, but relatable enough to feel safe.

This matters because individuality alone does not always produce connection. A person can be distinctive while appearing distant, superior or deliberately provocative.

Haaland’s difference carried no apparent demand that everyone else become like him.

He was not saying, “Look how unusual I am.”

He appeared simply to be living comfortably inside his own personality.

That comfort was contagious.

The Viking Row turned a personality into a collective experience

The phenomenon expanded beyond Haaland because Norway gave the public something it could physically and socially participate in.

After its victories, the team performed the Viking Row: players and fans alike, sitting together and moving in synchronised rowing motions. Haaland led the celebration a couple of times, but it was visibly collective. It belonged to the team, the supporters and eventually anyone who wished to recreate it. Fans from other nations began imitating it, including Spanish supporters celebrating their own World Cup run too! Tbh, it’s what makes sport such a special attribute to the human experience.

People connect more deeply when they are not merely watching something but doing something together.

Research into behavioural synchrony and collective effervescence suggests that coordinated movement, chanting and shared ritual can intensify social bonding and create a temporary sense of “we.” People begin to experience themselves not only as individuals observing the same event, but as participants inside a shared emotional state.

The rowing celebration translated Norway’s national identity into a universal human action.

Anyone could copy it.

And the moment people copied it, they became part of the story.

His individuality gave people permission

This may be the most significant part of Haaland’s influence.

He modelled the possibility that a person could achieve at an extraordinary level without becoming emotionally sterile, conventionally polished or embarrassed by their own peculiarities.

Social-learning theory tells us that people learn partly by observing models and noticing which behaviours are accepted or rewarded. When a highly visible, successful person behaves unconventionally and receives affection rather than rejection, observers are given new information about what may be socially possible.

Haaland never needed to deliver a speech telling people to embrace themselves.

His life delivered the message:

You can be brilliant and unique.

Powerful and gentle.

Competitive and playful.

Globally recognised and still amused by something ridiculous.

You do not have to exchange your individuality for credibility.

That is the permission effect of authentic influence. People do not simply become interested in the influential person. They feel more able to inhabit their own identity because that person has demonstrated that acceptance is possible.

Why he brought people together

Haaland became a particularly effective unifying figure because participation in his phenomenon carried a very low emotional entry cost.

People did not need to agree politically. They did not need to come from Norway, support Manchester City or possess deep football knowledge. They could enter through sport, humour, fashion, friendship edits, music, memes or simple human affection.

He also represented a story people instinctively understood: a boy from a small Norwegian farming town reaching the largest stage in world sport while remaining visibly connected to where he began. In Bryne, residents described the World Cup run as something bigger than football - an experience that united a country at a time when social media frequently divides it.

Haaland did not unite people by asking them to become identical.

He gave them a shared point of joy.

That is an important distinction. The most powerful communities are not always built through agreement. Sometimes they are built through a common feeling: amusement, affection, pride, wonder or the joy of witnessing someone completely comfortable in their own skin.

The real influence lesson

The lesson is not that leaders, businesses or public figures should copy Haaland’s humour, use strange filters or deliberately make themselves into memes.

That would be imitation, not authenticity.

The lesson is that competence creates credibility, but humanity creates movement.

Haaland had the confidence to let people see his individuality without repeatedly explaining it. He allowed his audience to participate without trying to control every interpretation. He demonstrated warmth without diminishing his authority. Most importantly, he showed that being taken seriously does not require taking every part of yourself seriously.

The Haaland phenomenon was never simply about a footballer becoming famous online outside the football community and fan base.

It was what happened when rare competence met visible warmth, unmistakable individuality and a global audience hungry for something that felt human.

He did not bring people together by appearing flawless.

He brought them together by making excellence feel approachable.

And perhaps his greatest act of influence was not persuading millions of people to become more like Erling Haaland.

It was making them feel a little safer becoming more like themselves.

Never did I ever think I would write about a soccer-star and it’s not even because of my viking blood and Norge heritage. This is a perfect example of creating impact in a positive way - simply? By being you.

You are your biggest USP. How are you placing yourself?