Hair might be the focus of Emma Kate Willman’s social media content, but ever since she began posting, she’s been getting comments focused on something (well, someone) else altogether.
“I swear, if I get one more comment saying that I look like Erling Haaland,” the US content creator quipped in a video this week. It’s a comparison she’s heard for years, and under every post, but things have escalated during the World Cup.
Emma Kate Willman’s comments section has been flooded by one name: Erling Haaland. Instagram, Getty
This week, in one two-hour period alone, Charleston-based Willman received 100,000 comments comparing her to the Norwegian striker the world can’t get enough of.
“That guy has some of the best hair I’ve ever seen in my life, so I’ll take it,” she told her followers.
Now, an already surreal situation has taken another turn, with Haaland himself stumbling upon his online ‘lookalike’.
The content creator woke up to find a comment from the football icon himself. Instagram/@emmakwillman
“I never really saw [the resemblance] until I woke up and he had commented on my Instagram,” Willman said. The football superstar posted a simple “Hi” with a thumbs-up emoji under a French braid tutorial she posted several weeks ago.
With thousands of followers to her name, Willman is used to a constant flow of notifications, but she was baffled when that unassuming Reel was inundated by an entirely new audience.
“It must have hit the right algorithm, and suddenly all the World Cup teams have commented on it, adidas has commented on it,” she said on Tuesday.
That video now boasts over 160,000 comments, most highlighting and poking fun at Willman’s resemblance to the long-haired athlete.
“Great two goals against Brazil today!” one reads, while another asks if she’s “Haaland’s long lost sister”.
Though gearing up for the World Cup quarter-final should be keeping him busy, Haaland is famously active on social media, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Willman’s video found its way to him.
“I never thought my biggest moment on social media was going to be because I look like a famous sports player,” she told her followers.
Over the years, Willman’s followers have remarked on her resemblance to other celebrities, including Zara Larsson, “baby Taylor Swift” and Millie Bobby Brown.
However, the Haaland comparisons have been constant, appearing on “every single post” she’s shared in her social media career.
“Can’t we just go back to when you guys were calling me Zara Larsson?” Willman joked in one video. AP Photo/Scott A Garfitt
Haaland has been the breakout star of the 2026 World Cup. Getty Images
“The best doppelgänger you give me is a male soccer player. Really?” she joked on TikTok.
“Can’t we just go back to when you guys were calling me Zara Larsson, please? No offence to Haaland at all, but I am very much just a little girl from Charleston.”
However, Willman admits she can see the resemblance in some of her content.
“I think half of it is just that I have the same facial structure as him, and we’re both really blonde with really light eyebrows,” she said.
Oddly, she isn’t the only female “Haaland lookalike” going viral on social media, with Swedish model Julia Grop and Russian model Anastasia Kostromitina both drawing comparisons to the striking striker.
Willman, for her part, is hoping to parlay the online attention into a real-life World Cup experience.
“I think they should let me fly out and do his hair for the game, that would be the highlight of my life,” she said.
