{"id":542798,"date":"2026-07-10T14:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T14:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/542798\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T14:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T14:02:10","slug":"world-cup-2026-how-do-england-stop-norway-and-erling-haaland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/542798\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: How do England stop Norway – and Erling Haaland?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The benefit of these runs is two-fold. <\/p>\n

The first is, if tracked, this run pulls opposition midfielders deeper, opening up space inside for the wingers to cut inside into. <\/p>\n

A common method of chance creation is a deep in-swinging cross to the back post. <\/p>\n

Back post runs are one of Haaland’s three most common methods of scoring, alongside through balls on the left, and cut-backs in front of a retreating defence – so conceding these crosses is less than ideal. <\/p>\n

Marc Guehi, if he does start, may remember that in 2024 while playing against Manchester City for Crystal Palace, Matheus Nunes played a similar cross to the ones described, before Haaland, peeling off the back of the England defender, headed home. <\/p>\n

On an individual level, Guehi and Palace back then would have benefitted from crowding Haaland out \u2013\u00a0one of the few ways teams have muted his influence. <\/p>\n

In a 1-1 draw against West Ham last season<\/a>, former Man City boss Pep Guardiola said: “Do you know how many central defenders were around [Haaland] today? 200 million. Do you know how many holding midfielders? It is the most difficult position on the planet.”<\/p>\n

On that day, West Ham used three central defenders and a holding midfielder close to the Norwegian \u2013 often man-marking him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The benefit of these runs is two-fold. The first is, if tracked, this run pulls opposition midfielders deeper,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-542798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542798","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=542798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}