Erling Haaland: Watch as Yorkshire businesses help send Leeds-born striker into space after 'out of this world’ season

Football website GOAL made Erling Haaland the first footballer to go into space to celebrate his remarkable debut season with Manchester City and footage of the stunt can be viewed above.

Haaland was born in Leeds in 2000 while his father Alf-Inge Haaland was playing for Leeds United before moving to his parent’s hometown in Norway in 2004.

The Norwegian returned to England when he joined Manchester City last summer and helped the club retain the Premier League title by scoring an incredible, record breaking 36 goals during the season.

To mark the “out of this world” achievement, GOAL tasked Leeds-based Dukes Makes with creating four 3D-printed Haaland models, one of which was fired into space and another being signed by the man himself.

The Haaland model took off from a launch site in Sheffield and climbed for two and a half hours to 34km (111,549 feet or 21,127 miles) - the closest region of space to Earth - otherwise known as Near Space.

Haaland touched landed back in Yorkshire suffering only “minor damage”.

Footballco’s Editorial Planning Lead, Miles Chambers, said: “GOAL’s world-class social and video team crafted this truly unique concept for Haaland’s out-of-this-world year as part of the first edition of GOAL Galacticos - a celebration of elite footballers with innovative content. We can’t wait to share what we have planned next.”

The miniature Haaland was designed by Omar Momani, a regular cartoonist for GOAL who captured Haaland’s iconic meditation celebration.