Middle-class football dreams of rising up

bóng đá - Ảnh 1. — Norway dreams of returning to the World Cup with Haaland - Photo: Reuters

The last time Norway participated in a major tournament was at Euro 2000. As for the World Cup, they have been absent since 1998.

Norwegian football is difficult to understand

Norway does not have a significant footballing tradition, especially compared to Sweden and Denmark, but it is still puzzling that a country that occasionally produces outstanding stars has been absent from the top flight for more than two decades.

Especially in the past few years, Norwegian football has suddenly become the world's leading training ground. Listing the world's top stars from Norway, shows that this list is surprisingly long.

They are Haaland, Odegaard and Sorloth - superstars playing for the strongest teams in Europe.

Lowering the bar a bit, Norway also has Strand-Larsen (Wolverhampton FC), Nusa (Leipzig), Sander Berge (Fulham), Ryerson (Dortmund), Ajer (Brentford)... They are all players who have proven their class in major tournaments. The 25 players called up by coach Stale Solbakken this time are valued by Transfermarkt at a total of 500 million euros.

Based on squad value, Norway became the strongest team in the "second tier" group, only behind the eight familiar European giants: England (1.4 billion euros), Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium (543 million euros, ranked 8th in value). They even surpassed Croatia (315 million euros).

The Haaland and Odegaard generation has emerged over the past 5 years, but they are not good enough to help Norway win tickets to the 2022 World Cup and Euro 2024. That is a great regret for Norwegian fans and the global football community.

Great opportunity

The expansion of the World Cup to 48 teams has significantly increased the chances of teams like Norway. They are in the same group as Italy, Israel, Estonia and Moldova. The group winners will automatically qualify (12 teams), while the 12 runners-up and the four other best teams from the UEFA Nations League will compete for the remaining four spots in the second round.

Overcoming Italy is still a very difficult task, but finishing second is within Norway's reach. After all, in the next round, their opponents will at most be Montenegro, Serbia, Wales or Poland, Romania... all of which are teams with weaker strength than Norway at present.

For a team that has not participated in major tournaments for more than 2 decades, this ticket will have a lot of meaning. Norway needs to return to the big stage to mark their brilliant golden generation. In the past, they only had 1 or 2 stars scattered in each generation. In this generation, the number of stars is more than the entire history of Norwegian football combined.

Similar to Norway, teams like Türkiye, Ukraine, Serbia, Greece... also crave World Cup tickets to mark their new generation of emerging talents. For Türkiye, they have Guler, Yildiz, Kokcu. Ukraine has Lunin, Trubin, Zabarnyi, Yarmolyuk. Greece has Pavlidis, Ioannidis; and Serbia has Vlahovic, Samardzic, Milenkovic...

A generation of stars are burning from middle-class football. It would be a shame if such names could not appear in Europe's top leagues.

The big guys start their journey

Because they are busy playing in the UEFA Nations League knockout stage, big teams like Italy and the Netherlands are just now starting their World Cup qualifying journey.

In Group G, Poland had a smooth start with two easy wins against Lithuania and Malta. The Netherlands need to win all 3 points against Finland in their first match of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers to avoid falling too far behind their opponents.

In Group I, Norway did even better, beating both Moldova and Israel by a landslide. They will be aiming for a draw against Italy to hopefully dominate on goal difference.

HUY DANG

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/nhung-nen-bong-da-trung-luu-mo-quat-khoi-20250606093940849.htm