After the Viking rowing and the tournament sheen of Brazilians following their team everywhere, this all came down to a contest between two players – Erling Haaland and Gabriel – who have become each other’s nemeses and simply want to beat the other.
Haaland won the contest, and the day, and wrote his name across a small Scandinavian nation’s football history.
When he rose with his decisive winning header, having strutted and skulked around Brazil’s box for 80 minutes with vanishingly few opportunities, Haaland strolled away, suppressing the urge to smile or laugh or scream into the brilliant blue New Jersey sky. But the look behind his eyes said enough.
For Norway, it delivered the stand-out result of this World Cup: the 21st ranked nation on the planet beating a fifth-ranked team oozing World Cup history.
They play the winners of England and Mexico in Miami. For Haaland, it was an almighty blow against Gabriel, who rose for that lofted ball with him and was left floundering on the ground. The Brazilian knew. He punched the turf in anger.
Erling Haaland scored twiced to fire Norway into the quarter-finals of the 2026 World Cup
Brazilian players consoled Neymar as his final match at a World Cup ended in crushing defeat
Brazil the lamentable
Brazil provided a few mercurial moments but were punished for the lack of a serviceable goalscorer.
There was a lamentable missed first half penalty from Bruno Guimaraes along the way. Their tournament in microcosm.
Respect to Vini Jr for not remonstrating with substitute Endrick for a scandalous waste of the game’s stand-out chance, just before the hour mark.
Vini danced inside Kristoffer Ajer and took out three more shirts with his arced pass. Endrick’s touch was desultory.
The Gabriel and Erling show
Gabriel watched Haaland like a hawk, never switching his attention to another Norwegian forward for more than a moment.
As the first half reached its conclusion, Haaland seemed to have had the beating of the Arsenal player.
He barged the defender as a long ball fell between the two them, knocking him off balance and creating a fraction of a second to shoot. But Gabriel immediately reached into a huge recovering challenge.
Here were the best in the world, testing each other to the limit. When Andreas Schjelderup’s cross came in for the next big chance on 79 minutes, Haaland didn’t miss.
Gabriel never got to grips with Haaland, a player he should know inside out from club level
Vini agony
There were moments when Vini Jr’s easy running and free spirit were on another level – a genius in the presence of mortals – and that should have been enough to finish the European challenge. But there was no one to convert from anything he created.
Vini can be too one-footed at times and that impacted his capacity to create on the several moments when he escaped Ajer and eased along the dead ball line. He has said he longs to be loved by the Brazilian public but in the final reckoning there was not enough for him to wrest the ball his nation’s way.
Norway had twice as many passes as Brazil and that dominance of the ball ultimately told.
Super sub
Norway had looked to Antonio Nusa, the 21-year-old RB Leipzig winger, to lay waste to an ageing Brazilian defence as he had the Japanese defence in the Houston round of 32. But this was a different, tougher kind of challenge for Nusa. Defenders blocked his way, handing Brazil the turnovers and breaks which provided their best scoring chance of the first half.
Stale Solbakken was concerned enough to withdraw the winger at half-time and introduce Andreas Schjelderup, the Benfica player, on the left.
Schjelderup proved much more decisive than any of the Brazil substitutes before carving out the opener.
Haaland dependency?
Yes Norway are hugely dependent, but he is working on such a superhuman level that it doesn’t take much assistance to make a difference, as we have seen today.
This game was a replica of the Japan round of 32 game, in that Haaland was peripheral for much of it before pouncing towards the end. I’ve not seen such a bond between one team and their fans since Wales and their ‘red wall’ went to the semis at Euro 2016.
Haaland creates this bond. It was he, once again, who was thumping the drum to lead the massed Norway ranks in a rendition of their rowing routine here last night. This clearly matters to him so much.
Any one got stats on penalty flunks?
Feels a bit 1970s to say ‘just put your foot through the ball’ doesn’t it? Days when you didn’t need the opposition to scuff up the penalty spot because it was all a mud bath anyway.
But when are coaches going to start hammering players for tottering up to the ball, striking last minute and missing.
Guimaraes was the first Brazilian to miss a penalty in anything but open play since Zico against France in 1986. Such an opportunity to set the Selecao on their way.
