Erling Haaland will pay for Bryne FK fans to attend the play-off match for the team where the top scorer started.

Erling Haaland, the Norwegian and Manchester City striker, will bear the travel costs for fans of his former club Brian FK to attend the team’s playoff match on Saturday.

brineSecond Division and Haaland’s childhood club, He reached the playoffs for the first time since 2006 He has a chance to be promoted to the Norwegian Eliteserien.

Haaland (23 years old) will cover the cost of the train trip for about 200 fans, which means about 175,000 Norwegian kroner ($16,000).

“These are difficult times financially for people, and that makes it difficult to prioritize a trip to a game like this,” Björn Hagerud-Röcken, marketing director at Bryne, told TV 2.

“So this gives more fans the opportunity to travel.”

Haaland started his career in the youth ranks at Bryan before being promoted to the first team in 2016. The following year, he also joined Molde before quickly moving on to play for the Austrian champions, Salzburg, then Borussia Dortmund of the Bundesliga before finally joining Manchester City in 2022.

Haaland was Norway’s top scorer in the Euro 2024 qualifiersBut that was not enough to secure his team’s qualification for next year’s tournament in Germany.