FA Cup
How Erling Haaland is dividing his country ahead of Manchester United vs Man City FA Cup clash
Manchester United are one of the best supported clubs in Norway but it is a country that takes pride in their sports stars and Erling Haaland is an export shining on the big stage at Manchester City.
“We’re a small county but we’re very proud of our sports heroes,” says Jan Age Fjortoft, one of Norway’s first exports to English football and now the face of the Premier League coverage back home for Viaplay.
That pride has swelled this season with the exploits of Erling Haaland at Manchester City. A record number of Premier League goals, more than 50 in all competitions and the chance to be part of a team that wins a historic treble over the next couple of weeks. Haaland’s mind-bending numbers have been the storyline of this Premier League season.
Norway has long had a love affair with English football, thanks to adopting early TV coverage of the game, and every weekend thousands of fans head for the country’s airports and fly into Manchester, Liverpool and London to watch their teams.
This season, more and more have been heading to the Etihad to watch their most famous son. As Fjortoft jokes, Haaland (and Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard) should be appointed the Norwegian ambassadors to England.
But if interest in City is going up thanks to Haaland, it doesn’t match the support of United, who along with Liverpool have a huge fanbase in Norway.
So if this weekend’s FA Cup final is going to split Greater Manchester here, in Norway it’s going to split an entire country down the middle. There will be no neutrals tuning into the action at Wembley.
“I think there will be a lot of people who follow the game and I think it’s only the United supporters who will support United, all others will support City because of Erling,” said Alf Ingve Bernsten, one of Haaland’s first coaches at hometown club Bryne FK.
If Norwegians are bursting with pride at Haaland’s achievements this season, then what about those who support United in the country? What do they make of it all given the impact he’s had on the success of their rivals. Is there still an admiration there?
“I think to get that out to them you will need Scotland Yard to get them to say it in public,” said Fjortoft, who played in England from 1993 to 1998.
“But I’m very naive, I can still follow my teams but I’m proud of Norwegians doing well. My dad has been a United fan since the Munich disaster in ’58 and the George Best era, so not even 52 goals can get him from red to blue.”
“I think every United fan will absolutely put United first,” explains Eivind Holth, a Norwegian journalist from United’s Scandinavian Supporters’ Club.
“It’s amazing and you’re impressed and so on, but it’s a tough watch because you don’t really want him to do well, especially not for City.
“Norway is still a small country and as with Solskjaer, the whole nation is obviously keeping tabs on Haaland. We did when he was at Dortmund as well, we’re always very, very proud of Norwegian athletes when they make their mark worldwide. With Haaland, it’s obviously been amazing, but for United fans, it’s been difficult.”
United came close to signing Haaland when he left Red Bull Salzburg to join Borussia Dortmund in 2020, with countryman and then United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer meeting the player.
When he left the Bundesliga last summer United were at a low ebb and were never in with a chance of landing a player who by then was one of the most prized strikers in the world. To make matters worse, especially for Norwegian reds, he chose City ahead of Real Madrid.
But Holth believes the arrival of Haaland at the Etihad has actually added some spice to how the Manchester derby is seen in Norway, with the fixtures between United and Liverpool traditionally seen as the bigger games.
“I guess for Norwegian United fans, the rivalry has become even more prestigious. Although there are not many Norwegian City fans you want United to beat Haaland and you don’t want to see him hurt you like he did in the first match [when he scored a hat-trick in the Etihad derby].
“I think for many United fans in Norway, the City rivalry hasn’t meant too much for the last 20 or 30 years, because the rivalry is not very big in Norway, it’s the Manchester derby and obviously you can feel how much it means when you’re over there.
“But in Norway, it’s Liverpool and United, so that’s historically been the biggest rivalry. Now it’s more like Haaland against United I guess.”
The obsession with Haaland in Norway is very real. The country’s biggest newspaper, VG, recently launched an online ‘Haaland Tracker’ to enable readers to keep abreast of all the records he has set.
His every move attracts media attention and journalists can be criticised for writing stories when he changes his hairstyle, so his impact is substantial, but as for his impact on City’s support in Norway, this is where people disagree.
Holth claims City’s Norwegian supporters’ club hasn’t had an uptick in interest despite Haaland’s heroics. In his hometown of Bryne, however, Bernsten is noticing more and more blue shirts on the streets.
“With the children growing up they support City, but the adults support their club plus Erling. So like me, I’m a Liverpool supporter and Erling. So we follow both our original team and Erling is doing well,” he said.
“The adults are supporters of Erling rather than City, but the children it’s more and more City supporters because of Erling. Erling is a very loveable guy, and we all want him to do well. So that’s not a problem at all. I think that often people in Bryne feel they own a bit of Erling.”
Fjortoft believes the support for English clubs is cyclical for youngsters and that with City now having their own Norwegian hero, they could soon be on the rise.
“There was always a following of Manchester City,” he said. “To be fair, there’s a lot of core Manchester City fans that used to be there before money was pumped into the club, that is part of the Norwegian football support, they have been there for ages.
“Then you recruit a lot of new ones with the things he’s doing at the moment. You can see by age sometimes, Liverpool with John Arne Riise, then Solskjaer, Henning Berg and Ronnie Johnsen at United winning trophies, it goes up and down with followers, but I would guess City would have the biggest increase lately.”
Fjortoft, who did a documentary with Haaland called Decision for Viaplay, expects viewing numbers for the FA Cup final and Champions League final to be “enormous” in Norway.
It would be little surprise if Haaland had a significant influence on at least one of those games. As Bernsten said: “I thought he would score a lot of goals but I didn’t expect 50. That was a big number. In a way it’s both expected and unreal.”
It’s just not so easy for United fans in Norway to appreciate it.
-MEN
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola admitted he was surprised that Norwegian striker Erling Haaland declined to take a penalty for his side in Saturday’s FA Cup final against Crystal Palace with the kick subsequently being missed by Omar Marmoush.
Trailing 1-0 to Eberechi Eze’s goal, City were awarded a penalty in the first half when Palace defender Tyrick Mitchell tripped Bernardo Silva who had burst into the area.
Haaland, who had failed to score in his first five Wembley appearances for City, looked poised to break that duck, but handed the ball to Marmoush whose first-ever penalty for City was superbly saved by Dean Henderson.
“I thought he would want to take it but they didn’t speak,” said Guardiola. “That moment for the penalty, it’s the feeling and how they feel. They decided Omar was ready to take it.
“Omar took a lot of time when the ball was stopped, so it put more pressure on him, and Henderson made a good save.”
Former Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney, working as a TV pundit for the BBC, said he felt the occasion might have got to Haaland.
“He’s a world-class forward, but when we are talking about Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, there is no way they are giving that ball away,” Rooney said.
“That is what separates them two players from Erling Haaland or Kylian Mbappe and these players. They are selfish and they want to score every game.
“When (Haaland) misses chances I think you can see it gets to him and it does affect him. Maybe the thought of taking a penalty at Wembley might have been too much for him. You never know, he is a human being.”
Haaland has scored 30 goals for City this season in all competitions but has missed three of his seven penalties.
-Reuters
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Crystal Palace face Manchester City at Wembley on Saturday hoping to lift the FA Cup for the first time and it is guaranteed that high on the pre-match agenda will be the club’s extraordinary and eventually heartbreaking 1990 campaign.
The semi-finals and final(s) that year were arguably the most dramatic in the competition’s long and storied history and remain the emotional high and low point of every Palace fan who watched them.
Palace were struggling in the top flight after promotion and had been humiliated 9-0 by Liverpool early in the season.
In the Cup they were hardly pulling up trees either, beating lower league Portsmouth, Huddersfield Town, Rochdale and Cambridge United to reach the semi-finals for the first time since they lost to Southampton as a third division team in 1976.
Facing runaway champions-elect and FA Cup holders Liverpool again in the semis look an insurmountable barrier and an Ian Rush goal had the Reds ahead at halftime at Villa Park.
Things then went crazy as Mark Bright and Gary O’Reilly gave Palace a shock lead. Two goals in two minutes put Liverpool back in front, only for Andy Gray to stun the odds-on favourites in the 88th minute to force extra time.
Amazingly, it was Palace who snatched victory in the 109th minute via Alan Pardew, who would later manage the club.
It was the first year that both semi-finals were live on TV and barely had the excitement abated when similarly unfancied Oldham ran out to face Manchester United at Maine Road.
The second division team had not beaten top-flight opposition in 66 years but accounted for four that season in a double cup run that caught the nation’s imagination.
Playing vibrant, attacking football under Joe Royle, Oldham twice came from behind to draw 3-3 after extra time – meaning a remarkable 13 goals had been scored on a day of unimaginable drama. United ended Oldham’s dream when they snatched a 2-1 victory six minutes from the end of extra time in the replay.
ALL-ENGLISH TEAM
The Palace side who lined up at Wembley were the last all-English team to play in the final while United’s were the last all-UK lineup to win it.
United manager Alex Ferguson was under huge pressure to deliver a trophy four years after arriving at Old Trafford, but Palace struck first through O’Reilly.
Bryan Robson and Mark Hughes turned it round and United seemed on course for victory, only for Ian Wright to come off the bench for the most wonderful 20 minutes of his life.
The former non-league striker had been sidelined for much of the season with a twice-broken leg, but exploded into action to equalise with virtually his first touch and then put the Londoners ahead early in extra time.
“It’s still the greatest moment I’ve had in my career – easily – simply because of everything that it had entailed up to that point,” Wright told the Palace website on Friday.
“My emergence at Palace, and to reach the biggest stage in English football, and all of a sudden I’m on the Wembley pitch.
“And then what happened after that was the stuff of fairytales. It really, really was.”
However, as the Palace fans sang in dreamland, Hughes broke their hearts with a late equaliser.
The replay five days later could not live up to everything that had gone before and though Palace battled gamely, United won it 1-0 with a goal by Lee Martin.
It was a victory that launched Ferguson and United on their dizzying journey of success – that included another extra-time FA Cup final win over Palace in 2016 after the Scot had retired – but one that left a gaping hole in the hearts of the losers.
“I would have loved to have won that FA Cup, and we were only seven minutes away,” said Wright, who went on to win multiple trophies, including two FA Cups with Arsenal. “Seven minutes. Honestly, I still can’t take it.”
-Reuters
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The first weekend of semi-automated offside decisions in English soccer descended into confusion on Saturday as Bournemouth had a goal ruled out after a record eight-minute VAR check.
Bournemouth, who eventually beat Premier League rivals Wolverhampton Wanderers on penalties in the FA Cup fifth round after a 1-1 draw, thought they had doubled their lead when defender Milos Kerkez scored in the 35th-minute goal.
However, new technology could not be used because the six-yard area was too crowded and VAR officials had to revert to manually drawing lines before disallowing the goal.
Fellow defender Dean Huijsen was adjudged to have been in an offside position as Kerkez’s effort brushed his shoulder before going in to the net.
The VAR check was further complicated as VAR officials Timothy Wood and Darren England also had to also examine the possibility of hand balls prior to the tight offside call.
Both sets of fans voiced their disapproval at the interminable wait, chanting “it’s not football any more” and “this is embarrassing”.
Referee Sam Barrott, who eventually announced the decision to the crowd via a microphone, had to explain to the respective managers and players what was happening during the delay.
-Reuters
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