Haaland’s goalscoring record for Norway is nothing short of phenomenal.<\/p>\n
He has hit 55 goals in 48 matches for his country.<\/p>\n
And in fact he is only the sixth player ever, and the first in 53 years, to score 50 goals in fewer than 50 caps.<\/p>\n
Norway’s previous top scorer was 33-goal Jorgen Juve, who held that record for 90 years.<\/p>\n
In these qualifiers he scored 16 goals – in eight games – plus two assists. That is double the goals tally anyone else has scored in Europe.<\/p>\n
He is the top scorer in these qualifiers in any continent, including ones where teams play twice as more games.<\/p>\n
Over a year has passed since Haaland last failed to score in a game for Norway.<\/p>\n
Including games for City Haaland has scored 32 goals in 20 games this season.<\/p>\n
But it is not just a one-man show. <\/p>\n
Captain Martin Odegaard, 26, has more assists than anyone else in European qualifying – seven.<\/p>\n
The Arsenal midfielder has played 67 times for Norway since making his debut at the age of 15.<\/p>\n
“Combine Haaland’s success with the fact that in this generation we also have Martin Odegaard,” said Sivertsen.<\/p>\n
“We’re a country of five million people and we have both the best striker and I would argue the best playmaker, certainly one of the best playmakers, in the Premier League. <\/p>\n
“Realistically that will not happen again in my lifetime and it’s something that I am cherishing.<\/p>\n
“If we have this conversation in five years I’d be baffled if there wasn’t a consensus that these are the two best footballers we’ve ever had.”<\/p>\n
But Sivertsen added: “I think the group of players we have would have had a shot at qualifying without him.”<\/p>\n
He compared Haaland and Odegaard’s standing to that of Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey when Wales got to the semi-finals at Euro 2016.<\/p>\n
“That team doesn’t work in the same way without Ashley Williams and Ben Davies at the back, without Joe Allen, without Joe Ledley,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Guys like this were absolutely integral for that team to work. You have to have a support structure around these stars to give them a platform to do special things.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haaland’s goalscoring record for Norway is nothing short of phenomenal. He has hit 55 goals in 48 matches…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-266940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}