Norway may have suffered a disappointing defeat to England in the quarter-finals of the 2026 World Cup, but star player Erling Haaland still emerged victorious.
Over the last month, the 25-year-old Norwegian with long blonde hair has become a viral sensation on the Internet, thanks to his endearing personality on and off the field.
In her latest move that has fans laughing, Haaland returned to Norway with a strange souvenir: a stuffed raccoon.
A photograph of the Manchester City striker disembarking from a plane shows him proudly holding a stuffed raccoon with his own bottle of alcohol.
“He followed me home,” Haaland wrote Monday on Instagram, along with a second photo of him walking the track with the souvenir.
Fans found the photo and caption funny. One commented on Instagram: “Man we are so lucky to have you in this world.”
“I just know she bought that in TX,” another wrote, while others called the move “iconic” and left laughing emojis on Haaland's post.
The raccoon only adds to the list of Haaland's recent antics that have launched him to global internet stardom.
One of his first viral moments of the 2026 World Cup came when he walked off the field with his head and neck extended and his shoulders rigid.
Its unusual posture spawned numerous memes, reenactment clips, and strange comparisons to everything from a green onion to other oddly shaped objects.
Haaland's embrace of the American South has also become another much-talked-about moment.
One video showed him purchasing a cowboy hat and declaring that it makes him look like a “real cowboy.”
Another featured him pretending to be the “social media guy” when a fan approached him. “Someone just told me that one of you is like the greatest soccer player in the world,” one woman told Haaland, who points to her YouTube producer, Jonathan Turton.
“You're looking at him,” Turton joked, flexing the muscles in his arms. Haaland told the woman to take a photo with the two of them and show it to his friend, asking him to guess which one is the soccer star.
“Don't worry, y'all,” he said in an exaggerated southern accent.
He also shared a clip of himself trying a New York City deli sandwich. While riding in the back seat of a black van, Haaland looked at the meat-filled sandwich and proceeded to take a giant bite. Shaking his head in approval, he looked up and laughed loudly at the cameraman.
To commemorate her stay in the United States, Haaland posted a selfie on Instagram aboard a bus. Wearing a backwards hat and sunglasses, he wrote “Bye” alongside an American flag emoji. “It's been emotional.”
