Manuel Akanji has detailed a conversation he had with Erling Haaland before he sealed his deadline day switch to Manchester City.
Akanji has become the third former Borussia Dortmund player to arrive at City this summer following the signings of Haaland and Sergio Gomez, after the Blues moved to snag the centre-back for a cut-price fee. Pep Guardiola is low on options at the back due to injuries to Aymeric Laporte, Nathan Ake and Luke Mbete and the 27-year-old will alleviate that problem after penning a five-year deal.
Akanji knows Haaland well from their time together at Signal Iduna Park and the Swiss has revealed that the free-scoring striker was the first person to text him once the deal came to light.
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"He [Haaland] was actually the first one who texted me," he told City's in-house media. "It was a couple of days ago he texted me and that's when I told him I would really like to come here. And also Sergio Gomez, I play with him as well in Dortmund."
Akanji has plenty of experience coming up against Haaland in training and he explained why the big Norwegian — who already has nine Premier League goals to his name — is so difficult to play against. “He has an amazing combination of skills," he continued.
"He is fast and physically very strong, but he is also technically skilful. With the combination of both, he is a striker very difficult to stop. The way he uses his body makes him very hard to stop him. He keeps on working on his skills, he is still young and has so many years in front of him, but I think he will only get better."
Akanji also admitted he never saw Gomez turning into a left-back after coming through at Dortmund as a forward. When asked for his opinion on the Spaniard as a footballer, he replied: "It's hard to tell for me now because when he was at Dortmund he was a No.10 and now he's a left-back so I don't really know how he plays right now. It was a different play style but I want to see how he's doing, how he is in training and I'm looking forward to meeting both of them.
"Not really [did he think Gomez would go to left-back] I thought the way he was playing there, No.10, was the perfect position for him but he just didn't get as many minutes in Dortmund because we had some other really good players there so he needed to make a step somewhere else where he could develop and obviously it helped him a lot otherwise he wouldn't be here."
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