The Viral Haaland Twin: Alisha Willman's Journey to Miami

What started as a simple hairstyle has turned Alisha Willman into an unlikely headline act alongside one of football’s biggest stars.

The content creator told People that braiding her hair spiralled into something she never imagined: millions of fans online comparing her to Erling Haaland. One video, one look, and suddenly the internet had found its “Haaland twin”.

She called the experience “so surreal” and admitted she never expected a casual styling choice to blow up on such a scale. The reaction has been relentless, but she’s embraced it. The memes, the side-by-side photos, the jokes. All of it.

What really pushed it into another stratosphere was Haaland himself getting involved. Willman said that seeing the Norway striker comment on her video made the whole saga feel “even more unreal”, turning a viral moment into a shared one with the man at the centre of it all.

As a creator, she said, you never truly know what will land. This did. And she’s simply “grateful people have embraced it and had fun along the way.”

Now the online joke is stepping into real life.

Willman revealed she will be in Miami, Florida, on Saturday (local time) to watch Haaland’s Norway face England in a World Cup quarter-final. She’d love to meet her “twin” while she’s there, and Haaland appears just as amused by the prospect.

“It would be pretty funny if our paths crossed in real life after all of this,” he told the publication, leaning into the story that has followed him across social media in recent weeks.

The resemblance gag won’t stop at the turnstiles, either. Willman is staging an Erling Haaland lookalike contest in Miami on the day of the match, with a serious prize on the line: tickets to the game for the winner.

On Instagram, she put out the call to action. Anyone who has ever been told they look like Haaland and supports Norway is invited. With the help of @kalshi, she’ll host the competition “right before the game on Saturday” with “2 FREE TICKETS TO THE GAME” up for grabs.

“Meet us at the location [in Miami], and bring your best Haaland moves!” she wrote. “See you there and good luck!”

From a braided hairstyle to a stadium event wrapped around a World Cup quarter-final, the Haaland doppelgänger story now has a stage, a crowd, and a prize. All that’s left is to see whether the original and his viral “twin” finally share the same frame.