In a Moscow apartment, a 24-year-old model with no previous interest in football held up her mobile phone. On the screen was a clip of Erling Haaland celebrating a goal; Anastasia Kostromitina, blonde and blue-grey-eyed, mirrored his expression, then posted the result. The video, she told Reuters, was a whim after friends and family kept insisting she looked like the Norwegian striker. It has since been watched more than 110 million times. “I did not expect that it will go so viral at all,” she said, “but the views are still going up.”

That accidental digital echo is only one strand of a phenomenon that, viewed from multiple continents, has turned Haaland into the World Cup’s most unlikely cultural magnet. His seven goals in four matches have carried Norway to a first-ever quarter-final, but the numbers that truly measure his reach are elsewhere: 20 million new Instagram followers in a matter of weeks, a spike that made him the most consulted footballer on Wikipedia, and a Google search page that now triggers an animation of Vikings rowing across the screen. In the United States, a baseball content creator declared she loved him “more than life itself,” calling him a “pretty Norwegian princess” and setting off a wave of “babygirl” memes that recast the 195-centimetre striker as an endearingly goofy figure. Haaland himself has fed the loop, posting a Shrek-filtered selfie with the caption “twin,” replying to a green-onion comparison with a side-eyeing dog GIF, and telling a news conference he finds Americans “kind of hilarious.”

That self-deprecating digital fluency has translated into tangible cultural and commercial ripples far from the stadiums of North America. In Peru, the national identity registry reported that 468 newborns have been given the surname Haaland since the tournament began, with 91 registered under the full name Erling Haaland; the numbers surged after Norway advanced. In Mexico, where the national team was eliminated by England, fans have adopted Norway as a proxy, with a regional band posting a video of a Viking row set to banda music. Haaland responded with a taco emoji and the words “Les escucho” – I hear you. Fashion analysts in London note that his off-pitch style – Hermès Haut à Courroies travel bags, colour-coordinated hair ties, Loewe tracksuits – has coincided with a moment when menswear is absorbing traditionally feminine luxury codes. An Oslo-based hair-tie brand in which he is an investor sold out a limited-edition World Cup collection within weeks; a pack of eight, originally priced at £21, has appeared on resale platforms for $90.

Ahead of Saturday’s quarter-final against England, the narrative acquired an additional layer of intimacy. Haaland and England’s Jude Bellingham, forged a close friendship during two seasons together at Borussia Dortmund, and British press coverage has framed their meeting as a generational duel built on mutual admiration rather than the cold rivalry that defined the Messi-Ronaldo era. The match itself, the first World Cup encounter between the two nations, pits Norway’s vertical, set-piece power – the tallest squad in the tournament – against a disciplined England side. Yet even before kick-off, the lasting image of Haaland’s tournament may already be fixed: not a goal, but a selfie from the locker room after eliminating Brazil, captioned simply “Well well well,” and the quiet certainty that, for a global audience, the machine had become a mirror.