The shrewdness of Rasmus Hojlund

When he arrived at Sturm Graz in Austria in January 2022, it only took a few games for the Austrian football fans to convince themselves that another Erling Haaland had arrived to play in their league. The Norwegian had appeared in the Fußball-Bundesliga, in Salzburg, in January 2019, he had left exactly one year later, leaving behind sixteen games and seventeen goals. Salzburg belongs to Red Bull, Sturm Graz is not, the amazement for this was greater. Few explained the reason for the presence of Rasmus Hojlund in Austria. The Dane’s stay in the Fußball-Bundesliga lasted even less than Haaland’s twelve months. In August 2022, eighteen games and nine goals later, he was already elsewhere, at Atalanta.

Rasmus Hojlund is not Erling Haaland. He lacks a few centimeters in height, a few kilos in weight. Above all, he lacks that enormous, immeasurable hunger for goals, a little speed and a lot of power. It doesn’t matter, because too Rasmus Hojlund is a great player, one of those who can make the difference even in the biggest teams. It didn’t take much for Gian Piero Gasperini to understand it, the Atalanta fans a little more time, but it’s not their fault that the Dea coach has decided to gradually insert the nineteen-year-old Dane into the team. In Germany there aren’t so many problems, but the media attention is less morbid and a mistake is just a mistake and not a certification of incapacity.

Rasmus Hojlund in comparison with Erling Haaland has never given too much weight. “We have little to do with each other”, he had said the first time an Austrian journalist had made the comparison. “Maybe, I’d love to,” he replied last time. Shrewdness is sometimes an innate gift, it can be improved with age, but it can’t be invented.

Rasmus Hojlund arrived in Bergamo with some acne on his cheeks and an amazed look. Over time he got over the pimples and started climbing the locker room hierarchies. Which is never easy, but which Gasperini has always allowed and encouraged. Above all, he had the merit of not paying attention to the comparisons that the world of football always lavishes profusely to frame a player who is starting to approach the big stages. And he started to score: in 583 minutes he scored three goals, the last one worth three points against Bologna.

He is a first striker who plays little as a first striker, who likes to find the field even outside the penalty area, who above all has the desire and the rush to lend a hand in midfield, in the defensive phase and who has no problem passing the ball when he sees a teammate better positioned than him for the shot. Above all, he seems to know how to give a damn about the seventeen million euros that Atalanta has invested for him.

Olives is the address book of John Battistuzzi on the (not necessarily) protagonists of Serie A. In the first episode there was talk of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (Naples), in the second of Emil Audero (Sampdoria), in the third of Boulaye Dia (Salernitana), in the fourth of Tommaso Baldanzi (Empoli) , in the fifth by Marko Arnautovic (Bologna), in the sixth Gabriele Spangaro entertained you with Beto (Udinese), in the seventh by Christian Gytkjær (Monza), in the eighth Armand Laurienté (Sassuolo), in the ninth Sergej Milinkovic-Savic (Lazio ), in the tenth Sandro Tonali (Milan), in the eleventh Cyriel Dessers (Cremonese), in the twelfth Tammy Abraham (Roma), in the thirteenth Stefano Sensi (Monza), in the fourteenth Federico Baschirotto (Lecce), in the fifteenth Moise Kean (Juventus) .