Erling Haaland was chased down by Bayern star's epic 35.3km/h sprint in 2020 | OneFootball

Erling Haaland is quite the physical specimen.

While, of course, the Manchester City star couldn’t possibly have reached these world-class heights without his endless technical ability and remarkable footballing IQ, his physical advantages don’t exactly harm his cause.

Rather, the steely strength and rapid pace that Haaland shows on the pitch are key weapons in his arsenal when it comes to mugging off defenders and finishing past goalkeepers.

Haaland’s physical prowess

Besides, you only have to look at the amount of times that centre-backs have quite literally bounced off Haaland so far this season to see just how much of a handful he really is.

As such, even the most physically gifted defenders out there really need to go to the well in order to stop Haaland from leaving them munching on the turf and questioning their life decisions.

However, believe it or not, Haaland isn’t entirely invincible and aside from ‘only’ actually being Europe’s second-most lethal finisher this season, he has also come out second best in physical battles before.

Davies vs Haaland

In fact, none other than Bayern Munich’s Alphonso Davies is one of the best equipped defenders in world football when it comes to the near-impossible task of stopping Haaland.

Although the City forward maintained a decent scoring record against Bayern, the results that he racked up in Der Klassiker were ultimately pretty poor – and Mr. Davies was a big part of that.

Not only is the Canadian one of the best full-backs in the men’s game, but he’s also one of few players in world football right now that could actually give Haaland a run for his money in a foot race.

When Davies caught up Haaland

And the Norwegian can vouch for that himself because he was robbed of a glorious one-on-one opportunity during a clash between Dortmund and Bayern in 2020 because of Davies’ pace and Davies’ pace alone.

In what ultimately proved to be a 1-0 defeat for Dortmund, Haaland had a huge chance to fire the hosts into the lead when he sprinted towards Manuel Neuer having evaded David Alaba’s challenge.

However, that’s where Davies came in with the extraordinarily fast youngster showing truly insane pace to close the gap, before backing it up with underrated strength to muscle Haaland off the ball before he could shoot.

It really was one of few times that Haaland has met his match from a physical perspective on a football pitch, so be sure to check out Davies’ breath-taking recovery pace for yourself below:

Video: Davies’ epic recovery pace to hunt down Haaland

Zooooom. That’s stunning sprinting.

It wasn’t any sort of optical illusion either because the Bundesliga’s social media manager Alex Chaffer confirmed that Davies reached a dizzying speed of 35.3 kilometres per hour (21.9mph) to reel in Haaland.

For context, it was almost enough to force Davies into the top 10 fastest recorded speeds that the Bundesliga had ever seen at the time.

Rice, Lukaku and Muller react

In fact, Davies’ pace was so impressive that it drew reactions from the likes of Declan Rice and Romelu Lukaku on Twitter, while Thomas Muller even compared him to a roadrunner in his post-match interview.

Haaland can be stopped… sometimes

Now, of course, it wasn’t a foot race in the sense that Haaland was also free of the ball and could just sprint to his heart’s content, but it was nevertheless freakish to see how quickly Davies could catch him up.

And the rapidity was certainly such that you can rest assured Haaland – who himself once clocked a speed of 36.04 km/h – would at least be feeling a little nervous about a 100-metre race against Davies.

So, while defending against Haaland and his myriad of physical gifts might well seem impossible, relax in the knowledge that Davies proves it’s sometimes, sometimes, ever so slightly possible.

Not that reassuring, is it? Ah well, we tried.