Erling Haaland ensured the battle for the World Cup’s golden boot is not a two-horse race with an electrifying brace in Norway’s win over Senegal in New Jersey.<\/p>\n
After Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe added to their tallies for the tournament to five and four respectively, the Manchester City forward kept himself within a goal of Messi as he scored a quickfire couple after the half-time break.<\/p>\n
Norway opened the scoring in the 43rd minute when Marcus Holmgren Pedersen capitalised on a defensive howler from Kalidou Koulibaly to sneak a ball past goalkeeper Edouard Mendy.<\/p>\n
Haaland got his first almost immediately after the break when he found himself in the perfect position to fire home a brilliant counter-attacking run and pass from Martin Odegaard.<\/p>\n
Senegal struck back five minutes later through Ismaila Sarr, but Haaland restored Norway’s advantage in the 57th minute with a deft first-touch strike that was lofted over Mendy and into the back of the net.<\/p>\n
Sarr guaranteed a thrilling finish when he scored his second at the start of stoppage time, but Norway were ultimately able to fend off Senegal’s late rally.<\/p>\n
The result guarantees progression to the knockout rounds for Norway, who have won two group stage games for the first time in their history.<\/p>\n
Senegal will need a victory against Iraq to give themselves a chance of making it to the round of 32.<\/p>\n
Watch every game of the FIFA 2026 World Cup live on RT\u00c9 with highlights on RT\u00c9 Sport digital platforms and live blogs on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app<\/p>\n
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Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Erling Haaland ensured the battle for the World Cup’s golden boot is not a two-horse race with an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-513711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}