Official Football Thread

That's mad. It's like Livingston beating both Celtic and Rangers multiple times and ending the SPL season at the top of the league.

I watched them beat Norrköping a couple of weeks ago on TV and their stadium is basically a patch of grass and a couple of chairs.
 
Wow. After the 4-1 win against Estonia on Thursday we knew that only an absurd result could see Italy rob us of the spot in the World Cup - we would have to lose 9-0 which was of course not going to happen. Or ...?

Italy did, as one could expect, take the initiative early and the most paranoid Norwegians would maybe get a bit anxious when Italy got the first goal exactly at the 10 minute mark. But after Italy had a couple of chances to make it two, Norway managed to sort of calm things down and drag down the pace of the game for the rest of the 1st half.

Whatever was said in the Norwegian dressing room during the half-time break I don't know. But it must have worked. 45 minutes later, as the match went into injury time, Italian fans were already leaving the San Siro in the thousands with the score at 1-3. And the last thing to happen before the ref's final whistle was Wolves striker Jørgen Strand Larsen rubbing extra salt in the wound, putting our fourth.

Even though we did go undefeated in the qualifying for the 1998 World Cup, it was nothing like this. Eight straight wins, a goal difference of 37-5 and beating Italy handsomely - twice!

I had almost given up on seeing Norway qualify for a World Cup again, after all those failures. When it starts next year, it will be 28 years since we last took part in it.
 
Coming from someone in Sweden who at least on paper have great players - I think we will soon look to Norway as a golden generation thing as Belgium was a decade ago
 
Abas said:
Coming from someone in Sweden who at least on paper have great players - I think we will soon look to Norway as a golden generation thing as Belgium was a decade ago
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Norway deserves to go very far.
Funny you mention Belgium...the current team is only a pale shadow from what it was years ago.
How is it possible not winning against Kazachstan?
 
Watched that Italy - Norway game, impressed by Norway, Nusa was great, I never heard of him. Also impressed by Haaland's attitude, was on a hatrick and subbed off, when 1 more goal would have given him the all time top scorer in qualification's record, but he was still down celebrating as much as anyone else when the guy who game on for him scored the 4th.

Great weekend for Ireland too, I had thrown in the towel on qualifying long ago and to finish the campaign with two wins against teams that are better than us was the stuff of fantasy.
 
Italy are all over the place and might fail to qualify again which is ridiculous but Norway look strong. In Haaland they have a goalscoring machine so if he`s on form come the World Cup then they could go deep, could easily be competition top scorer next year.

Hopefully England can get to the sharp end too but we have seen easy qualification before and then failure in the main competition.
 
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Decided to watch Scotland vs Denmark and did not regret it. What a game! All the way from McTominay's brilliant 1-0 a few minutes in, to the full drama of the last 15 minutes.

Now let's see the mysterious ways of the UEFA play-offs, where Sweden will have a chance to qualify despite winning zero games in the qualifier group ...
 
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