It can be difficult sometimes to remember why we ever started liking football. What was it that first stirred us back in our childhood to make sure we were always by a radio or television at twenty to five? That led us to pore over the details in the Sunday papers? That made us belt a ball endlessly against the garage wall and keep detailed records of the games of Subbuteo we played against ourselves? It’s hard to remember now. Was it the legal wrangling? Was it the appeals to the court of arbitration for sport? Was it the futile pixel-by-pixel examination of offside decisions? Was it even the thrill of seeing the rich and greedy hammer much poorer opposition and then demand to be even richer? Was it human-rights-abusing states pumping money into the game to make everybody forget about their wars and torture centres? It’s so hard now to remember.

Chunk!

One noise was enough it bring it back, the noise of a ball struck with such incredible velocity that it whacked into the metal grating behind the net. It obviously would be unfair to place on Erling Braut Haaland the burden of being the only thing in modern football that is good and uplifting but that doesn’t mean it isn’t broadly true. In a jaded world when nothing is free from tribal sniping, he alone seems fresh and pure.

Even those who insist Liverpool’s run of 103 points out of a possible 105 has somehow been fortuitous or the result of conspiracy surely haven’t found anything with which to denigrate Haaland yet. He’s 19. He’s played 462 minutes of Champions League football, 372 for them for an Austrian team, and yet this season he’s outscoring Barcelona in the competition.

There’s something ridiculous about him, something so outlandish about his size and speed and power that the only appropriate response seems to be to laugh. No striker, perhaps, has operated so outside the bounds of what seems reasonable since Ronaldo, whose goal for Barcelona against Compostela in 1996 left Bobby Robson responding by clasping his head in disbelief and awe.

Haaland doesn’t seem entirely real. At times he can seem like an adult playing against the under-14s: he’s 6ft 4in, quicker than anybody else and able to kick the ball harder. He’s like a cartoon, not only in appearance but in his capacity to command the narrative. Who has scored a hat‑trick on their Champions League debut and then, four months later, marked their debut for their new club by scoring a another hat-trick in the Bundesliga, in 18 minutes, after coming on as a second-half substitute?

Other than Roy Race or Captain Tsubasa, who could respond to conceding an equaliser to Paris Saint-Germain, against the run of play, by, two minutes later, gathering the ball from Giovanni Reyna’s pass, switching it in full stride on to his left foot and unleashing that shot into the top corner from 20 yards? You could almost see the thought bubble: “Oh, for goodness’ sake, I’ll sort this out,” as he set off, almost see the whoosh‑lines on the page as he struck it. Even that noise, that chunk, seemed like something out of a comic book.

There is still a rawness about him. Haaland’s touch is not entirely deft and perhaps his movement is not as refined as it could be, but at the moment that’s part of the joy of him. He will develop and he will, with experience, be adapted into more orthodox patterns, but for now he is something magnificently brash, on the pitch at least, a playground footballer with an uncomplicated shooting ability that recalls the greats of a previous era, a Jackie Milburn or a Bobby Charlton.

Erling Braut Haaland still shows a love of football itself. Photograph: DeFodi Images/Getty Images

The worry with a young player of that size is that they have been used to dominating through the age groups because of their physique, but Haaland was a late developer. Even at 15, there were many – including the former Oldham, Leeds and Bradford right‑back Gunnar Halle who worked with him in the Norway national setup – who thought he might not be big enough to make it. His growth came relatively late, which means he learned to play as an average-sized kid, and then as a gangling one; he has a normal human consciousness operating within a superhuman frame.

What made Tuesday all the more special was that the goal came for Borussia Dortmund, a club that, while far from perfect, have at least managed to retain their sense of connection with their fanbase, against Paris Saint‑Germain, the apogee of the self-regarding nouveaux riches, a side that change the colour of their kit on a marketing whim. One of their two star forwards has already been spoiled, a great talent diverted by the unbearable pressure of being the most famous sportsperson in Brazil; the other, after recent spats with his manager, is showing worrying signs of going the same way.

Perhaps Haaland, too, will be tainted in time – the culture of football tends to the toxic and his agent is Mino Raiola, which does not exactly suggest a young man uninterested in money – but for now his worst trait appears to be his grumpiness with the media. Even that, in a world of image management and knowing celebrity, seems refreshing. Salzburg players have spoken of how on away trips, as they played cards or messed about, he would be reading articles on how to improve his diet or sleep.

There is still with Haaland a love of football for the game itself, not for the trappings it might provide him, something that was seen in his celebration, running away before collapsing, Charlie George-style, as though overcome by what he had just done, a faint smile just beginning to tug at his lips before he was engulfed by teammates.

This is what it was once about, before cynicism and greed, before leaked emails and overstated sponsorship deals, before sophisticated patterns of gegenpressing and frustration over frame rates. Haaland is a reminder that, at some level, football is still about the joy of absolutely wellying a ball to score a winning goal.