Can Erling Haaland score enough goals to help Norway live up to their status as the World Cup’s ‘dark horses’? It’s tough to tell.
When Norway last reached the World Cup finals and famously beat Brazil in Marseille, Erling Haaland had not yet been born. In the 28 years since those late goals by Tore André Flo and Kjetil Rekdal, Norway haven’t come especially close to the heights that they hit in the south of France – but now, thanks to their record-shattering striker, many Norwegians believe that they have a chance of doing something special on the sport’s grandest stage for the first time in a generation.
Erling Haaland in action against Morocco in a World Cup warm-up matchplaceholder image
Erling Haaland in action against Morocco in a World Cup warm-up match | Getty Images
Thanks to Haaland, Norway aren’t coming into the World Cup as also-rans – instead, fans and pundits are falling over themselves to anoint Ståle Solbakken’s side as the ‘dark horse’ of the tournament. A two-part Netflix documentary about the team’s bid to qualify was even called ‘Norway: The Dark Horse.’ It’s a high bar for a team with no tournament experience to clear.
Plenty of dark horses fall at the first hurdle, and Norway have been drawn in a tough group which features France, Senegal and Iraq. The last (and likely least) of those teams are Norway’s first opponents when they get a long-anticipated campaign underway in Boston on Tuesday. But just how far can Haaland’s goalscoring take them?
Erling Haaland gives Norway an edge - but gauging just how good they are is a challenge
It’s hard to undersell just how impressive Haaland has been for his national side, and his achievements with Norway arguably exceed everything he’s done at Manchester City. He isn’t the only talented player in the team, but few would argue with the idea that they would not have made it to the World Cup without him. They certainly wouldn’t have generated half as much hype had he been absent.
Haaland was just 24 when he broke Norway’s all-time scoring record, which predated World War II and had resisted the best efforts of forwards like Ole Gunnar Solkjær, John Carew and former Chelsea striker Flo to break it. He has only sped up since passing that particular landmark in 2024.
He scored 16 goals in qualifying, equalling the European record for a single qualifying campaign with a number which was double the total any other player managed. He scored at least once in every match, including a hat-trick against Israel and five in a remarkable 11-1 demolition of Moldova. Haaland now has an astonishing 55 goals in 50 caps, while Norway as a whole scored 37 goals in just eight matches to reach the finals, the most of any team in European qualifying.
Nor were Norway and Haaland mere flat-track bullies, beating up on weaker sides like the luckless Moldovans. They crushed Italy 3-0 at home and 4-1 in San Siro as they won every game, and have lost just one of their last 16 matches – a 2-1 friendly defeat away to the Netherlands back in March.
Working out just how good Norway are in relation to the tournament’s stronger sides still isn’t easy. They brushed a disappointing Italian team aside, but few of their recent matches have been against opposition who could be described as first-rate. Warm-up matches yielded a win over Sweden and a 1-1 draw with Morocco.
Those are results which suggest, at least, that their wins over the Azzurri weren’t a fluke but they don’t tell us just how well Norway might fare in their first major tournament since their head coach Solbakken was a member of the playing squad and Haaland wasn’t even a twinkle in his father’s eye. Both manager and star player alike have been keen to gently downplay expectations.
“Every single game is going to be tough,” Haaland told the media in a typically guarded interview on Sunday evening. “My main goal was to qualify. Honestly, now, I'll take everything as a bonus."
Solbakken, who retired as a player in 2001 after suffering a heart attack during training which left him clinically dead for seven minutes, was even more determined not to talk his team’s chances up too much.
“I think we are dark horses in terms of, on our day, we can maybe beat a stronger opponent. But to say that we are dark horses for the whole tournament is too far,” he said. “We are in a very hard group… I think it will be very tight and hopefully we have the organisation and the match-winners to get through.”
Can Haaland’s supporting cast help Norway live up to their ‘dark horses’ tag?
Organisation is something Norway typically have in spades under Solbakken, and Haaland is most certainly a match-winner – not that he’s alone. They have the craftsmanship of Arsenal playmaker Martin Ødegaard and the raw speed of RB Leipzig winger Antonio Nusa too, while Atlético Madrid forward Alexander Sørloth is joint-third on his country’s all-time scoring list. Haaland has smashed all those records with the assistance of a strong supporting cast.
Norway are versatile, too. Typically operating in a 4-3-3 formation which tends to look more like a 3-5-2 when Borussia Dortmund wing-back Julian Ryerson pushes forward and allows Sørloth to join Haaland on the inside, Norway have been happy to chop and change the specifics of their playing style according to the opposition, even experimenting with a 4-4-2 in recent months when Ødegaard has been unavailable through injuries, with Fulham’s Oscar Bobb coming in on the right wing.
They should certainly have an appropriate combination of tactical discipline and firepower to beat Iraq on Tuesday, but France and Senegal will present far sterner tests. Until those games have taken place, assessing Norway’s chances of a deep run is difficult.
That’s especially true given that Ødegaard endured a rather difficult season with Arsenal, plagued by persistent fitness issues and seldom able to string as many starts together as he might like. Norway will need his vision and creativity against the best sides in the competition, and Haaland will need his precise passes to keep his goalscoring form intact.
But there is plenty of cause for optimism for Norway, and the 10,000 fans that are estimated to be travelling to the United States – and while Haaland and Solbakken may not want to set expectations too high, it’s still clear that they believe, deep down, that they might just be able to live up the title of that Netflix documentary.
"I want to create something special there together with the whole nation, and hopefully we can make that happen,” Haaland added. "I want to create something special there together with the whole nation, and hopefully we can make that happen."
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