"VAN" (Sports Desk - 30.06.2026) :: “We want Haaland, we want Haaland!” chanted the Norway fans at Boston Stadium during their team’s final Group I match against France at the FIFA World Cup 2026™. However, the Landslaget’s coach, Stale Solbakken, decided to leave his prize asset, Erling Haaland, on the bench and did not cave to the fans’ demands.
Without their main man and fielding a heavily rotated side in which only midfielder Fredrik Aursnes retained his place from the previous match, it came as no great surprise that the Nordics, who had already booked a round-of-32 berth, succumbed 4-1 and finished the group stage as runners-up. “It would have made no sense to play [Haaland] and risk him getting an injury,” said Solbakken. “I have no regrets. I stand 100% behind the decision I made.”
When Norway face Côte d’Ivoire on Tuesday in the last 32 at Dallas Stadium, Haaland is fully expected to return to the starting line-up. If recent history is anything to go by, there is every chance he will trouble the scoreboard at least once.
The 25-year-old has plundered more international goals than he has caps, with 59 in just 52 appearances. At World Cup 2026, his first major international tournament – he already has four to his name, including two braces: one in the 4-1 win on his debut against Iraq and another in the 3-2 victory over Senegal, which secured his side’s progression to the knockout stage. He has now struck at least once in each of his last 12 competitive appearances for Norway.
With the goal machine gearing up for a return, he and his team-mates are daring to dream of gracing the last 16. “I’m just really good at scoring goals. I don’t know what I’m doing, but that’s just how it is,” said Haaland.
The Manchester City marksman does not need many touches to make his presence felt. All of his ten shots at FIFA’s flagship extravaganza have been first-time efforts, with seven of them on target. In fact, in the contests against the Iraqis and Senegalese, he touched the ball just 42 times – the fewest of any Norwegian to complete both games. His efficiency is what makes him an elite goalscorer and, at these global finals, he is averaging a goal every 10.5 touches.
Born on 21 July 2000 in Leeds, England, at a time when his father, Alf-Inge Haaland, was plying his trade for Leeds United, the goalscoring great has sporting pedigree in his DNA. An accomplished defensive midfielder, his father featured at the 1994 World Cup in the USA. Since last August, the Nordic No9 has also honoured the other side of his family.
Unlike at Manchester City, where he wears simply “Haaland”, he now has “Braut Haaland” emblazoned across the back of his national-team shirt, paying tribute to his mother Gry Marita Braut. As well as being the strapping striker’s mother, she is one of Norway’s greatest heptathletes, having won multiple national titles in the 1980s and 1990s. Sporting talent also runs deep through the maternal side of the family, with Haaland’s cousins, Jonatan, Albert and Emma Braut all professional footballers.
When it comes to scoring goals, there would appear to be no limits to Haaland’s talents. At the FIFA U-20 World Cup™ in Poland in 2019, he notched no fewer than nine times in Norway’s 12-0 humbling of Honduras, still the biggest victory in the tournament’s history.
In his Bundesliga debut for Borussia Dortmund on 18 January 2020 following his move from Austrian outfit Salzburg, he came on in the 55th minute with the team trailing 3-1 away to Augsburg. Just 23 minutes later, he had grabbed a hat-trick – something no substitute had ever achieved in the German top flight – and Die Schwarzgelben emerged 5-3 victors.
At this year’s global showpiece, the Norwegian has become only the sixth player in the competition’s history to score more than once in each of his first two appearances on the stage.
“Haaland is a top striker – the next Cristiano Ronaldo,” former Norway international and current technical director of Bærum Viggo Stromme told FIFA. “He embodies physical power and a very direct style of play. He seems to have a limitless appetite for success and a rare competitive edge.”
Following Lionel Messi’s hat-trick in Argentina’s curtain-raiser against Algeria, Haaland posted on his Snapchat account: “Messi is a madman.” When the magician added yet another goal to his tally against Jordan – having come on as a substitute to score from a free-kick to round off a 3-1 triumph – his goalscoring rival wrote: “Messi is never letting me touch the World Cup Golden Boot.”
After the diminutive Argentine sealed his spot as the all-time leading scorer in World Cup history with a brace against Austria, Haaland enquired “Messi, bro, are you even human?” The question had more than a hint of his trademark irony as the Norwegian’s own laser-like eye for goal has long invited comparisons with robots.
Yet behind the machine-like efficiency lies a footballer whose greatest ambition is a deeply human one: leading his country to World Cup glory.
Cr-FIFA2026
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