MIAMI, July 11 (Reuters) – Norway coach Stale Solbakken \u2060shed tears of pride after his side were lost 2-1 to England after extra time to \u2060exit the World Cup at the quarter-final stage, bringing to an end a campaign that \u200ccaptured hearts and minds at home and abroad.<\/p>\n
Norway blazed through the group stage and beat Brazil in the last 16 to set up a titanic last-eight clash against the English, but despite Andreas Schjelderup giving Norway the lead, Jude Bellingham equalised before halftime and netted \u200ba second early in extra time to send the Norwegians home.<\/p>\n
“We have \u2060been playing at the highest level, and \u2060the margins were not in our favour, but that’s life, and now we need to breathe a bit,” \u2060Solbakken \u200csaid.<\/p>\n
From the stunning goals of Erling Haaland to the famous rowing celebration patented by the fans, Norway made their mark on the tournament as they returned to the World Cup finals for the first \u2060time since Solbakken was a player in the squad in 1998.<\/p>\n
“This is \u200bthe way it is, this \u200cis at the top level, it can’t get any higher than this and we had a \u2060few problems in the \u200bbeginning, the first 20 minutes, but I really applaud the boys,” the 58-year-old said.<\/p>\n
FOOTBALL FEVER IN NORWAY<\/p>\n
Football fever caused supplies of the country’s red home shirt to run out as thousands of fans flocked to stadiums, streets and squares to watch \u2060Haaland and company’s epic run in the tournament.<\/p>\n
“I hope that the \u200bsummer of ’26 has been okay for everybody and that we’ve done something good together. We have had fantastic support from all of Norway, and we lived up to the hype, and that’s what I’m really proud of,” Solbakken \u2060said.<\/p>\n
“We said that we would step up when we got to the World Cup from the fantastic qualifiers, and we’ve managed to do so, and the boys did so. And we have been here together for 6-1\/2 weeks. I don’t see that people have been bored for a second, and that’s good to know.”<\/p>\n
In a tense game, \u200bNorway had a goal at a set-piece disallowed following a push by \u2060Haaland, and rumours spread around the stadium that the ball might have struck an overhead camera wire before England’s second \u200bgoal, but Solbakken was in no mood to look for excuses.<\/p>\n
“There \u200care many situations today. And, well, maybe we have \u200bbeen looking at many of them in the World Cup, so these things happen. We just want to wish England the best of luck,” he said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Philip O’Connor, editing by Ed Osmond)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI, July 11 (Reuters) – Norway coach Stale Solbakken \u2060shed tears of pride after his side were lost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,13201,596,85,21418],"class_list":["post-794672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}