Manchester United sign Rasmus Höilund from Atalanta for £72m

Manchester United will make one of the most expensive and interesting transfers of this summer. He acquires the 20-year-old Danish striker Rasmus Høylund from the Italian side Atalanta for an amount exceeding £70 million. Until recently, the little-known football player Heilund sharply raised his quotes in the past season and a half. They forced him to be compared with the Norwegian Erling Haaland, who at Manchester City has become a reference center forward.

The fact that Manchester United agreed with Atalanta on the transfer of the Dane Rasmus Höylund was reported by all leading British media resources. The BBC and The Guardian agree on its value. It, according to them, is £ 72 million, although, perhaps, taking into account various bonuses. In any case, the deal will be among the largest in the offseason. She is also very curious.

Rasmus Høylund is naturally compared with another Scandinavian footballer, Norwegian Erling Haaland, who last season, having moved from Borussia Dortmund to Manchester City, helped the English giant finally add a triumph in the Champions League to the title of winner of the national championship and showed simply fantastic performance. In total, according to its results, Haaland had 52 goals in 53 official matches. Høylund is indeed very similar to the Norwegian football player. He also has a tall height – over 1.90 m – and specific skills that are useful for playing at the forefront of attack. For example, the Dane, like Holanna, highlights the ability to penetrate into free zones with quick attacks from his team. He also feels equally confident when playing with his feet and head with a greater propensity for dribbling than the Norwegian. Actually, these observations caused the BBC to be tempted to state that Manchester United simply decided to copy the move of the neighboring club.

But the biographies of the two players are still quite radically different. Erling Haaland looked absolutely reliable, essentially a win-win sign for Manchester City because of his background. The Norwegian, who is slightly older than Rasmus Høilund (Håland turned 23 in July), has been striking at the top level as a teenager, and then only improved it. Actually, the current English flagship acquired an already mature shock forward. Coach Pep Guardiola had only to fit him into his schemes.

Rasmus Höylund, on the other hand, has been relatively modest until recently. He made his professional debut in 2020 at Copenhagen, and Høylund did not score goals for this club. Nevertheless, the young striker was interested in Sturm from Austria, a country in which Erling Haaland also upgraded while playing for Red Bull. This team acquired the Dane for a modest €1.8 million and got a huge return on the deal. Høylund managed to score 12 goals in 21 matches for Sturm in different competitions and interest the representative of the Big European Five. It was the Italian Atalanta, which in the summer of 2022 agreed to pay about ten times more for the Danish player than the club from Graz paid for him just a few months ago.

However, the Italian team did great business on Rasmus Heilund. The Dane, taking advantage of the injuries of his experienced competitor Duvan Zapata, quickly won his place in the base, hit the gates of Atalanta’s opponents ten times, and also waited for the first call to the national team. His debut in it turned out to be fantastically successful: in March, Høilund fired a hat-trick against the Finns in the qualifying match for the 2024 European Championship. As a result, the striker attracted the attention of Manchester United, who were ready to spend as much money on him as they rarely spend on established superstars.

However, the reason why the Manchester team, who last won the gold of the English championship ten years ago, and finished third in the last championship, took the risk is quite obvious. They have a cool attacking line even by the standards of the English Premier League. But for most of the players who play in it – Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, Anthony Martial, Mason Mount, who came from Chelsea – the position of the forward center forward is not profile: they are used to operating from depth or on the flanks.

Alexey Dospekhov