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.
 
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 ...
 
So, today is the draw of the 2026 World Cup. And the announcement of the very first Fifa peace prize ...

Wonder who the nominees are.

As for the draw itself, I expect a long-winded and not very easy-to-follow procedure, considering all the different constraints to the draw:

- Top four FIFA ranking teams to be in different "quarters" of the draw, basically confining each team to one of three groups
- No more than two UEFA teams in any group
- No other associations will have more than one team in any group

This means once we get to pot 3, there will be many restrictions to which teams can be drawn in each group. Wonder if they will be able to present that in a tidy way so that we the viewers can see what they are up to.
 
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They were happy to have Bosnia in the final round but it turned out that even Bosnia was an insurmountable obstacle.
 
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I dislike this as it diminishes our achievement of smashing them at the San Siro :D

Meanwhile, Sweden qualify after having a stinker of a qualification campaign, getting a second chance, and making the most of it. I guess someone are loving the Nations League more than others ... (To be honest, I think this was more or less the point of the UEFA Nations League. Replace the friendly matches with matches that actually might count)
 
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