Manager Stale Solbakken attempted to deflect questions, tersely saying Haaland was “very good” and “scoring goals” before admitting he did miss one chance against Portugal he would normally have finished.<\/p>\n
But asked if he had to speak to the forward because of the extra focus, Solbakken replied: “What we speak about is between him and me.”<\/p>\n
Ajer did offer more of an insight, saying Haaland remained fully focused halfway through this four-game Nations League window.<\/p>\n
“He’s been exactly the way he’s always the same with the national team,” said Ajer. <\/p>\n
“He’s truly focused on the upcoming games. I think he’s trying to do the same as everyone else, wait and see what the outcome is – but right now the main focus is Wales tomorrow night. That’s clearly been his way of doing it.”<\/p>\n
Asked if he had seen a difference in Haaland since the news broke, 59-cap Ajer said: “No not at all. Ever since I met him brings lot of energy and joy to the group. <\/p>\n
“The biggest compliment I always give is that he hasn’t changed a bit from the moment I met him even though he’s the biggest star on the planet right now.<\/p>\n
“He’s been exactly the same the last few days as well which is not a surprise for me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Manager Stale Solbakken attempted to deflect questions, tersely saying Haaland was “very good” and “scoring goals” before admitting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-787776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787776","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=787776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}