How England can stop Erling Haaland revealed as plan for Norway made clear | OneFootball

Three Lions have their work cut out to limit the impact of Manchester City’s superstar striker in World Cup showdown

And yet, their No9 is their greatest threat and must be handled with extreme care in Miami.

If England are to make it past Stale Solbakken’s team and reach the last four against either Argentina or Switzerland, keeping Haaland quiet is going to be a massive factor.

The Manchester City superstar has taken his first World Cup by storm. He has featured in four of Norway’s five games so far and scored seven goals, his double responsible for knocking out five-time champions Brazil in the round of 16.

Haaland is one of only three players (alongside Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe) to have scored more goals at the 2026 World Cup so far than England captain Harry Kane.

It could be a fascinating battle between two of the best strikers in the world. And just as Norway will have spent the past few days assessing how to stop Kane, England have been drilled on how to thwart Haaland.

Ezri Konsa will be as confident as anyone going into the game. Haaland has only managed to score once in five appearances against Konsa in the Premier League, and Konsa’s Aston Villa have shut him out completely in their last four meetings, winning all of the most recent three.

Dangerman: Erling Haaland has fired Norway into their first World Cup quarter-final

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Haaland, though, is an adaptable striker. He can tear away on the counter-attack, win headers - as he showed against the Brazilians - and finish from both outside and inside the box, when given even a split-second of time or half-a-yard of space.

England, therefore, need to cut the supply line into him. They can do that in two ways - by intercepting passes played into his feet, and blocking crosses.

The latter will largely be the responsibility of the full-backs, but Thomas Tuchel’s wingers will need to engage as well.

That may well lead the German to select Anthony Gordon and Bukayo Saka from the start over Marcus Rashford and Noni Madueke, just like in Mexico.

That is because Gordon and Saka are more defensively disciplined, offering maximum cover when going the other way and seeking to limit the opposition.

Plenty of the passes played into Haaland’s feet or into his path in build-up have tended, in this tournament, to come from Fulham’s Sander Berge or Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard.

The name of the game will be to get tight to both midfielders and seek to dispossess them or at least block their passing channels into Haaland.

That will fall on Elliot Anderson, Declan Rice and Jude Bellingham, and they will need to be extremely disciplined when doing so, particularly Rice and Bellingham, who are on yellow cards and at risk of suspension for a possible semi-final if they pick up another booking and England get there.

England must cut off Norway’s supply lines to Haaland if they are to keep him quiet

England must encourage Norway to pump long and speculative balls into the air, rather than give them the time and space to pick out Haaland.

John Stones, Marc Guehi and Nico O’Reilly all know Haaland well from their time together at City, so can use their experience of the striker’s preferences and playing tendencies.

But that works both ways, with Haaland also aware of how they tend to defend, including any potential weaknesses.

The England defence’s best bet is to deploy a halfway house between zonal and man-to-man marking.

One centre-back gets a little more touch-tight to the big centre-forward, the other acts as the sweeper, able to pick up the pieces and screen goalkeeper Jordan Pickford in case anything has gone wrong and Haaland has threatened to move into a shooting position.

And it is a shooting position where England absolutely do not want Haaland.

Sometimes, the best form of defence is attack, and Djed Spence had the right attitude when he spoke about Haaland this week.

“Finishing,” Spence replied when asked by ITV Sport what Haaland’s standout strength is.

Asked whether he had ever seen anything like it, Spence said coolly: “Yeah. Harry Kane.”