“I Absolutely Love a Kebab”: How Gary Neville’s Quick-Fire Questions Revealed the Human Side of Erling Haaland
In October 2022, Manchester City’s newest superstar sat down with Gary Neville for a short Sky Sports fans’ Q&A that was never meant to be profound. What emerged instead was one of the most endearing and memorable moments of Erling Haaland’s early Premier League career. When asked about his favourite meal, the Norwegian goal machine did not mention the organ meats or meticulously prepared high-calorie plates that had already become part of his public image. He grinned and delivered a line that still circulates years later: “I absolutely love a kebab… or kebab pizza. I absolutely love it.”
The confession was both funny and revealing. At the time, Haaland was rewriting the Premier League scoring charts in his first season at the Etihad. He arrived from Borussia Dortmund as a highly hyped, almost robotic finisher whose physical power and clinical finishing looked designed for the modern game. Documentaries and interviews had already highlighted his extreme discipline. He spoke openly about eating cow’s heart and liver, prioritising local quality food, and consuming thousands of calories a day to fuel his training. Against that backdrop, the kebab admission landed like a quiet rebellion.
Haaland explained the reality with characteristic honesty. “My favourite meal is things we can almost never eat, things we only eat once in an occasion. I love a kebab or kebab pizza. I absolutely love it. I have to say it’s one of the best things, but I can never eat it. Sometimes I sit at home and I’m like, ‘Oh, it would be so good.’ But then I go to the fridge and make something else. You know, that’s my life.” The image of one of the world’s best athletes standing in his kitchen, craving a late-night takeaway and choosing discipline instead, humanised him instantly.
Neville’s format was deliberately light. It was a rapid-fire set of questions submitted by fans, designed to give viewers a sense of the player beyond goals and press conferences. Haaland’s answers were straightforward, occasionally dry, and often laced with quiet humour. Favourite band? Oasis. He had already met them, so the choice felt personal rather than performative. Favourite drink? Wine. “I like wine a lot. I have to say I cannot lie.” When Neville joked about pairing it with kebab pizza, Haaland shut the idea down immediately. Not a good mix.
His footballing heroes and memories were equally telling. Growing up, the player he most admired (apart from his father, Alfie) was Zlatan Ibrahimović. The Swedish striker’s combination of physical dominance, technical arrogance and larger-than-life personality clearly left an impression. Asked about the best goal he had scored, Haaland pointed to Champions League moments: the strike against Dortmund after leaving the club, the goal against Schalke, and especially his debut contribution for Dortmund against Paris Saint-Germain. These were not random highlights. They marked key steps in his rapid rise through European football.
One of the more interesting exchanges concerned trust under pressure. Neville asked which player Haaland would choose to take a penalty if his life depended on it. The answer was typically self-assured yet generous. “I probably have to either say myself because I trust myself a lot. If not… maybe Mario Balotelli, because he was maybe the best I’ve ever seen as a penalty taker. You remember all the ones he did? Crazy.” The choice of Balotelli, a former Manchester City cult figure known for both brilliance and chaos, showed Haaland’s appreciation for pure technical quality under pressure, even when the personality attached to it was unpredictable.
The interview took place during a period when Haaland was still adjusting to life in England and to Pep Guardiola’s demanding system. In a longer conversation with Neville around the same time, the striker spoke about the loneliness of playing as a lone centre-forward, the need for patience, and Guardiola’s almost obsessive football intelligence. The quick-fire Q&A offered a different window: less tactical, more personal. It showed a young man who was intensely professional yet still capable of ordinary cravings and ordinary preferences.
That contrast is why the kebab clip has endured. Elite athletes are often presented as machines of recovery protocols, sleep science and nutritional perfection. Haaland’s body of work supports that image. His goal tallies, physical presence and consistency have placed him among the most dominant strikers of his generation. Yet the admission that he sometimes sits at home wanting a kebab, only to open the fridge and choose something else, reminds supporters that even the most driven players live with ordinary desires. Discipline is not the absence of temptation. It is the daily decision to walk past it.
The clip has been recirculated multiple times since 2022, including fresh social media posts years later that still focus on the same few seconds of footage. Its staying power says something about what fans actually want from their heroes. Goals and titles matter, of course. But so does the occasional glimpse of personality that feels unscripted. Haaland has never been the most expansive interviewee. Early in his career he could appear awkward or monosyllabic in media duties. Moments like the Neville Q&A cut through that perception. They revealed a player comfortable enough to laugh at his own restrictions and confident enough to name Balotelli without irony.
Looking back from 2026, the interview feels like an early marker of Haaland’s public image. He has gone on to break more records, win major trophies and become one of the defining figures of the Premier League era. The intense focus on diet, recovery and performance has remained constant. What has also remained is the occasional reminder that behind the numbers is a person who once admitted, with a smile, that kebab pizza ranks among the best things in life even if he almost never gets to eat it.
Gary Neville’s nine questions were never going to change football history. They were light entertainment designed to fill a few minutes of broadcast. Yet in the process they captured something genuine. Erling Haaland loves a kebab. He just refuses to let that love interfere with the standards he sets for himself. In an age of carefully managed athlete brands, that small, honest confession still feels refreshing. Sometimes the most memorable football moments do not happen on the pitch. Sometimes they happen when a superstar is asked a simple question and answers it without a filter.
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