The Summer Man-Style Odyssey Of Manchester City Striker Erling Haaland

When Dolce and Gabbana chose Puglia, and more specifically Bari, as their summer 2023 show venue, Manchester City’s world-beating soccer team under (Italian) trainer Pep Guardiola had not yet won their ‘treble’ of the British Premier League Cup, the Football Association cup, and the European Champion’s League cup, and their attacking mid-fielder Jack Grealish had not yet kicked off the summer by inventing what the English now call “the Full Grealish,” for his spectacular four-day bender, beginning with the parade in the team’s home city.

Nor had City’s star striker andErling Haaland had a chance to exhibit himself in anything but team kit, with or without his shirt, which he has a habit of stripping off to put on his head, as pictured below. Or, simply, draping himself in the Norwegian flag. But after the team’s triumph, in late June, Haaland and his mates trooped off to Ibiza and then by July 9 there he was, popping up in Bari, Puglia, in the company of Isabel Johansen, his steady girlfriend, at the Dolce and Gabbana shows, cool and collected in a baby-blue suit — swimming strongly upstream against the Italians and others around him who seemed to favor darks.

In true man-style, off-duty, Haaland shows a cool lack of care, and more than a little of his inner geek, as in the coordinated — quilted, no-less, — baby-blue “play-suit” thing, with spot-on matching baby-blue sliders as he hit the beach in Ibiza. The man of the hour in Europe clearly loves baby-blue. What is that? It’s play-time!

By contrast, Alcaraz seems to have come up to snuff, tie charmingly askew.