Manchester City forward Erling Haaland has become a playable character in popular mobile video game "Clash of Clans", game developer Supercell said on Tuesday.

Haaland's character is called "Barbarian King" and is the first in the game - downloaded more than 2 billion times - to be based on a real person. The 23-year-old, who is himself a fan of the game, was 12 years old when it was first released.

The Norwegian posted a trailer for the game on his social media which shows himself in real life encountering characters from the game before being transported into the animated game world.

"When we heard Haaland was a fan of our game and that he wanted to partner with us, it was really a dream scenario," Stuart McGaw, general manager of Clash of Clans said in a press release.

"It's been tough to keep this one quiet, but I'm excited to finally be able to talk about this epic partnership with Clash of Clans," Haaland said.

"I've been a huge fan of the game for a long time and know everything about it, so to appear as an in-game character is really cool." REUTERS