Haaland remains inevitable as Norway inflict another early World Cup exit on Brazil | OneFootball

Erling Haaland might have just delivered the most Erling Haaland performance imaginable. The platonic ideal of an Erling Haaland performance.

Right down to the identity of the defender he bullied for the first of his two goals to send Norway into a first ever World Cup quarter-final and send Brazil spinning to yet another disappointingly early exit on the global stage.

Haaland had been, even by his own sarcastic standards, an almost entirely peripheral figure for the first 75 minutes of this game.

Then he scored two stunning goals to break Brazil’s hearts and send Norway into the last eight of a World Cup like it was the most normal thing in the world.

In the minutes before the first of his goals, there had just been glimpses. A couple of times when he almost got in for tap-ins at the back post. A deflection took one away from him. Another was just out of his reach.

But then substitute Andreas Schelderup got one just right, and Who Else But Haaland timed his run and leap just right, leaving Who Else But Gabriel sat on his arse to plant the most perfect of coaching-manual downward headers beyond Alisson.

While his team-mates appeared content to run the clock down from there, Haaland had other ideas.

When he found himself with the ball at his feet 20 yards from goal and with nobody closing him down as the clock ticked past 89 minutes, he decided he might as well just smack it absurdly hard into the bottom corner. And then celebrate a goal that took Norway past Brazil into the quarter-final of a World Cup like a meaningless late consolation.

There was an inevitability about the goal that just really should not exist for a goal scored from that far out. But once Haaland was given the time and space to take a touch and pick his spot, 20 yards might as well have been two.

It matters not one bit at the moment, but it also takes Haaland level with Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi on seven goals in a spectacular race for the Golden Boot.

Haaland has now scored in his last 14 competitive international appearances. England or Mexico cannot say they’ve not been warned, and there really is now no sensible limit to be applied on how far Haaland’s inevitability might take Norway here.

There was still time for a pity penalty to allow Neymar’s last ever kick at a World Cup to be a goal of absolutely no consequence, his in-the-face celebration of the fact Brazil had finally got past Orjan Nyland very much the equivalent of a bowler giving a send-off to a batter they’ve just dismissed for 280.

Even with Haaland’s goals, there is a case for Nyland to be man of the match. He had already saved one spot-kick and made plenty of other important saves – the most spectacular of which prevented Kristoffer Ajer from scoring the most absurd of own goals from distance when it was still 1-0.

The fact the best save of the lot came from his own man tells a story. Brazil were poor. Pedestrian. Unforgivably so. They went out with a bad-tempered whimper.

Only once did Brazil truly break Norway apart, when Vinicius Jr’s delicious through-ball sent Endrick away.

They youngster had only just stepped off the bench, which might explain both the space Norway afforded him, and his failure to capitalise. His first touch was okay, but his second was a shocker, allowing Nyland to close him right down and force him to rush his shot and stab it wide.

It was hard by the end to escape the notion that this was a pair of okay teams in possession of conspicuously absurd match-winners.

It was Norway’s who finally stood up in a game that had for the longest time been a curious spectacle. Almost a non-event for long periods after a chaotic start until Haaland took charge.

It was almost as if early frights and let-offs had scared and scarred both teams, lending a timid, fearful sense to the game for much of the next hour or so.

Norway had the ball in the net in the early minutes with a wonderful passing move that exposed a ponderous, porous Brazil midfield. The oddity was that not for another hour or so did Norway even seem to particularly try that route again.

The offside that ruled the game out was entirely avoidable, with Martin Odegaard setting the tone for his performance by taking a touch too many and a second too long to make his decision to release the ball down the right.

But it was a move that showed Norway the way, and one they were then happy to largely ignore for a good hour or so, content as they were to stick to what was in fairness a very successful Plan A of keeping the game tight and slow before a ferocious sprint to the line.

Soon after that disallowed goal, Brazil were awarded a penalty by VAR. It was all rather curious.

Kristoffer Ajer dived in recklessly on Matheus Cunha, and could have no real complaint when the penalty was given by VAR despite him getting a touch on the ball. The nick he got on the ball would not have prevented Cunha getting to the ball next had he not wiped him out.

We think these are penalties. We’re happy to see them given as penalties. We wish in general that VAR hadn’t made on-field penalties too frit to give penalties. But we’re still slightly surprised at how little sway Ajer’s clear if inconsequential touch seemed to have on the video-referee proceedings. In a tournament where there has been a high bar for penalties, this was a good but nevertheless slightly surprising overturn.

None of that mattered, though, because Bruno Guimaraes completely f*cked it.

We’re not the biggest fan of the stutter run-up, but we also don’t entirely subscribe to the utter woke nonsense theory. There is a method to the madness, but only if you are incredibly good at it and understand the point.

Guimaraes is not incredibly good at it, and didn’t understand the point. He glances a couple of times at Orjan Nyland, but both are early in the ‘run’-up. Neither allow him to ascertain whether the keeper has committed to one side. And nothing about Guimaraes’ approach to the ball gives him options about how to strike the ball.

Watch the replays of both Guimaraes and the keeper, and it becomes farcical. The keeper is only ever going left, and Guimaraes body shape simply gives him no choice but to go that way. The stutter does nothing of any value at all.

And after all that, stutter or no, there is simply no reason or excuse ever for any professional footballer to be sending a penalty at a Nice Height For The Keeper. It was a double-victory for silliness.

The outcome of that early drama was very nearly an hour passing before anything further of real note happened. But when it did, it was well worth the wait.