Some athletes bury their old side projects the moment fame arrives, but one Norwegian striker's teenage rap detour keeps resurfacing at the biggest possible moments. Erling Haaland, now one of football's most bankable strikers, has never quite left behind a boy band he formed as a bored teenager in 2016.
That summer, Haaland and two friends turned downtime at a youth camp into a group called Flow Kingz. They released exactly one song. In 2016, Norway's U-17 footballers Erik Botheim and Erik Tobias Sandberg, along with Erling Haaland released their single 'Kygo jo,' and the song found its way onto social media's viral charts. Both bandmates went on to become professional footballers themselves.
Speaking to Goal after signing with Manchester City, Haaland didn't dodge the question. He explained, "It's a group of three. One guy - Erik Botheim - and Erik Tobias as well, we are good friends." He rapped under the name Lyng, a nickname that has followed him into football folklore.
The joke has aged into something closer to a running bit. Haaland has floated the idea that music could still be waiting for him once his playing days wind down, and he wasn't being entirely sarcastic when he once named farming and rapping as his fallback careers on Twitter back in 2020.
His hip-hop instincts haven't cooled either. He turned up to a Drake gig at Manchester's Co-Op Live in August 2025, and shared stories from the event on his Snapchat account, later showing up in a post from Drake himself. More recently, at the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Haaland won over a famous new fan, meeting rapper Travis Scott and handing the Grammy-nominated artist a signed Norway shirt.
None of it has slowed him down on the pitch. Haaland has been one of the tournament's standout performers, and Norway now turns its attention to the knockout rounds chasing a result that would top their history at the tournament. Whether Lyng ever records another verse remains unclear, but the story keeps writing itself one viral moment at a time.
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