Dortmund identify two potential Haaland replacements from Ligue 1
Martin Macdonald
- 28 Sept 2021 17:05 BST
- 3 min read
Borussia Dortmund have identified Nice forwards Amine Gouiri and Kasper Dolberg as two potential replacements for Erling Haaland should the Norwegian be sold in 2022.
Haaland is currently the most sought-after centre-forward in world football and has been linked with nearly every major team in Europe including Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus.
Chelsea reportedly bid for him in the summer transfer window only for Dortmund to refuse to negotiate after selling another star player in Jadon Sancho to Manchester United.
In the summer of 2022, though, Haaland will allegedly be allowed to leave due to a release clause included in his current contract which has put clubs on high alert.
TRENDING
Ultimately, it could be up to the player himself as to where his next destination will be after Dortmund.
He has emerged as a truly devastating striker since bursting onto the scene with RB Salzburg and then Dortmund.
For BVB, Haaland has scored a remarkable 68 goals in just 65 starts and last season broke the record for the quickest player to score 20 Champions League goals, surpassing the time previously set by Kylian Mbappe.
He will be almost impossible to replace but Dortmund will need to do so with another shrewd acquisition, the kind of which they have pulled off so regularly over the last decade.
According to Sport1, they will look to Ligue 1.
Amine Gouiri
Amine Gouiri was meant to be the next big thing at Lyon after breaking through the youth ranks into the first team.
At the age of just 16 he made the bench for a match against Bordeaux and would eventually make his senior debut in 2017 in a Ligue 1 fixture against Montpellier.
In total, he would make 15 appearances for Lyon, but would eventually seek a move away after becoming disgruntled at a lack of game time.
At the time Gouiri was at Lyon, they had the likes of Memphis Depay, Moussa Dembele, Bertrand Traore and Karl Toko Ekambi available in attacking areas which presented a barrier in a route to the first team.
Eventually, he was sold to Nice for €7m and there he has found his feet.
In the 2020/21 season he scored 12 goals and recorded seven assists in 31 Ligue 1 starts, while he already has five goals and two assists in eight starts in 2021/22.
Kasper Dolberg
Like Haaland, Kasper Dolberg previously had a reputation of being one of the best young strikers around and another gem to come from Scandinavia.
After impressing at Silkeborg, Dolberg was signed by Ajax following a glowing report by the same man who discovered Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Christian Eriksen among others, John Steen Olsen.
While at Ajax, he was named Dutch Football Talent of the year after his first season in the Eredivisie in 2017, but things would ultimately become stale for Dolberg in Amsterdam which led to a €20 million transfer to Nice in 2019.
He has a record of a goal around every three games for the French side and has started the 2021/22 season particularly well, scoring four goals in four starts in all competitions.
