World Cup semifinal preview: Norway have one game left to shock everyone

Two days ago I wrote about staying up until 2:45am for a quarterfinal I was not sure Norway could win. They won it, on penalties, and now there is a semifinal to lose sleep over instead, which is a better problem than the one I had last week. This is the preview version of that post, written with a clear head instead of two hours of sleep, and I want to actually think through why this team keeps getting to the next round instead of just hyping the next alarm clock.

Why this run is not a fluke

The easy explanation for Norway’s run so far is Haaland, and he is obviously a huge part of it, seven goals through the quarterfinal is not something a tournament produces by accident. But the England match is the one that should change how people talk about this team. Haaland was shadowed by two and three defenders most of the night and barely had a sight of goal, and Norway won anyway, off a set piece and a goalkeeper who has now made himself as much a part of this story as the striker everyone tuned in for. A team that can win a knockout match with its best player mostly nullified has more than one route to a result, and that matters more in a semifinal than in any match before it, because whoever they face next will have studied the England gameplan closely.

The other underrated part of this run is the calm at the back. Norway have conceded in every knockout match so far and won anyway, which usually means either a defense that is fragile under real pressure, or a team with enough composure to not panic when the scoreline gets uncomfortable. Two knockout wins in a row after conceding first or level suggests it is the second one, and that is a harder quality to coach into a team than finishing.

What actually worries me

Fatigue is the honest concern. This is a squad with far less depth than the traditional football nations left in the tournament, and they have now played two matches that went the distance, one to extra time and penalties. Recovery time between the quarterfinal and the semifinal is short by any standard, and Norway do not have the bench to freshen up a full unit the way a deeper squad can. If this run ends here, it is more likely to be legs than tactics.

The second worry is one every underdog run eventually runs into, which is that opponents stop being surprised. England had scouting reports and still lost, so it is not as simple as “eventually someone will have done their homework,” but there is a difference between one team’s homework and the accumulated attention of an entire tournament watching your last two matches on repeat. Whatever set piece won the England game, the next opponent has now seen it broken down from six different broadcast angles.

Where I land on it

I am not going to pretend I have a clean read on the matchup itself since the exact opponent and kickoff time were still settling as I wrote this, and I would rather be honest about that than fake a level of certainty I do not have. What I do believe is that this Norway team has now beaten a five-time champion and a traditional heavyweight back to back, without either result depending entirely on one player, and that is a different, sturdier kind of run than the one I was hyping up two weeks ago purely on the strength of a name on a shirt. I will set the alarm again. At this point that is not really a question.