Why Erling Haaland brought a stuffed raccoon home from Texas

Erling Haaland left the World Cup without a trophy. He came home with a taxidermy raccoon instead. And somehow, that has turned out to be the most talked-about souvenir.

It started earlier in the tournament, not after the exit, as many assumed.

Tap Here to Add The Daily Star As A Trusted Source

In early July, after Norway beat Côte d'Ivoire in the Round of 32, Haaland and his teammates went on a shopping trip through Dallas. He filmed parts of it for his YouTube channel, gushing about how friendly everyone in Texas was.

That trip led him to Wild Bill's Western Store, a shop known for its taxidermy displays. Among the cowboy hats and snakeskin boots, Haaland spotted a stuffed raccoon. He could not resist.

He paid $750 for it. He also picked up two taxidermized squirrels, one dressed as a sheriff, and another gripping a can of Budweiser, at roughly $450 to $500 each. Store owner Julie Newport later told The Athletic of the New York Times that Haaland simply gravitated toward the display the moment he walked in.

He posted about the haul on Snapchat, calling the animals "Geezahs." For a while, that was it. A funny story from a shopping trip.

Then Norway's World Cup ended on 11 July, with a 2-1 extra-time loss to England in the quarter-finals. Two days later, Haaland stepped off the team plane in Oslo carrying the raccoon under one arm.

The moment's photos quickly gained viral popularity. Some fans assumed it was AI-generated. It was not.

Haaland explained the whole thing with a single Instagram caption. "It followed me home. " The post has since crossed 6.6 million likes. He also opened a poll asking followers to help name his new companion, offering Cowboy, Ranger, TEX, and R.O.W., short for Raccoon On Wheels. R.O.W. is currently winning as usual.

The raccoon has done more for Wild Bill's than any ad campaign could have done. Newport says the store has logged around 2,000 online orders since Haaland's post, nearly a third of them international, a customer base the small Dallas shop never had access to before.

Of course, the raccoon was not travelling alone. Haaland also carried a brand-new Dolce & Gabbana Sicily tote, fresh off the Milan runway, in his other hand. It fit a pattern fans have grown fond of in all tournaments.

Whether he is dancing at a Miami club hours after a loss or turning up at a fashion show days later, Haaland treats disappointment like a minor inconvenience rather than a crisis.

This week, the raccoon is the real story. A quirky Dallas souvenir has outlasted the disappointment of a quarterfinal exit, turned a small Western store into an overnight international sensation, and given a football star a stranger, funnier trophy than the one he actually came for.