After the heist at the Azteca, it's the Vikings of Norway up next for Thomas Tuchel's England brigade.
Norway come into the quarterfinal riding high on the momentum of arguably their greatest-ever World Cup moment -- a 2-1 win over Brazil courtesty of an Erling Haaland brace.
To get the lowdown on England's quarterfinal opponents, ESPN spoke to Norwegian journalist Thore Haugstad. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Has World Cup fever caught on in Norway in a big way?
TH: I would say the whole national mood is euphoric and ecstatic. Even with the stars that we have and the qualifying that we had, we didn't really expect to go this far and to play this well. We had a team that went far in the World Cup in 1934, but nobody talks about that. It's ancient history. It was before the war. There's barely any footage of it. So anything we do today will be compared to the two World Cups in the '90s where we lost in a group stages in 1994 and then lost to Italy in the round of 16 in 1998. And back then the biggest result was to beat Brazil in the final group game, which was a big, big upset. But Brazil didn't have anything to play for. Whereas now we've beaten Senegal, we've beaten the Ivory Coast, we've beaten Brazil again in a game that's far more important to them and we reached the quarterfinals for the first time since after the war. So one, I don't think anybody expected the team to do so well and to go so far.
And two, I don't think people expected so many people to care about it. We have so many people who are decked out in full Norway national team shirts, paying a thousand pounds to get a table to watch on the big screen. They're out in the city center at 3 a.m. singing and dancing and banging drums and sitting down in the street and rowing and it's really unhinged. We haven't really had a national party like this in Norway for as long as I've been here and I can't really remember anything in the past either. Maybe the Olympics in 1994, but this is football. We're not supposed to be this good in football. So it's just really unprecedented on every scale.
How do you expect Norway to set up tactically?
TH: I think everybody was surprised oby how much Norway had the ball against Brazil in the second half. We dominated possession and Brazil were a lot more careful than we expected. I don't expect England to be that careful; Thomas Tuchel has generally prided himself on controlling games and taking the game to the opposition.
This is definitely a Norway team that tries to play well and keep the ball along the deck. I know there's a lot of fans in Norway who want us to just smash it up to Haaland because he can create so much trouble on its own. But Norway hasn't tended to resort to that really unless they are absolutely desperate. So I think we'll have two teams who are cautious, but who will also try to play football and try to create chances through patience and moving the ball around. But as to who will dominate possession and have the ball most, I honestly find it difficult to say. Maybe England have a slight edge.
Which England player will Norway most be wary of?
TH: They don't really have a culture for really obsessing about one player. There was a lot to talk about Vinícius Júnior before Brazil, but he was handled pretty well. Of course, there's always going to be focus on [Harry] Kane because he's so important, but I think maybe the vulnerability for Norway has been down the flanks with the fullbacks.
[Julian] Ryerson, our first choice, struggled a bit with injury. And then Ivory Coast's Amad Diallo scored a really nice goal down our left-hand side. So maybe if I could guess, the focus will be on stopping England down the wings. [Anthony] Gordon played really well against Mexico and we know both [Bukayo] Saka and [Noni] Madueke can be really dangerous. So that will be the main threat.
What is your response to people calling Norway a one-man team and it being Haaland and 10 others?
TH: I mean, it's true to an extent, but you also have to take into account that he's not really that involved in the actual play. It's just we don't have to generate that many chances before we score because he's so efficient and we don't need that many crosses and that many attacks for him to carve out the chance. But we still have to carve out those chances.
I think the wingers have been a bit underrated, not just the first choices, but also the second choices. We have Antonio Nusa, who has been one of the key players in the qualifiers because he's one of the few players who can actually dribble past people. And then on the other side we have [Alexander] Sørloth who is a striker and hasn't maybe had his best World Cup so far. But then against Brazil, we subbed both of them off at half-time and brought on Oscar Bobb and Andreas Schjelderup. And Schjelderup, in particular, has been really, really good for Benfica and for Norway when he's gotten the chance. They were both really, really good against Brazil. Schjelderup was the one who crossed for Haaland's [first goal]. Both of them can create chances in a phone booth, they're so technical and so good and so quick. So the wingers have been really, really important.
Obviously [Martin] Ødegaard is always important, but I think maybe the wingers have been the biggest surprise. And then also Patrick Berg had a really, really good game against the Ivory Coast. So yeah, you can't really go this far without just having one player and there's a lot of unsung heroes in the Norway team.
What has Ståle Solbakken done well at this World Cup?
TH: He got the big stars to really invest in the national team. There's never been any suggestion that Haaland and Ødegaard are taking it lightly or skipping games to prioritize their club side. He has created an amazing culture and the team was pretty young when he took over and there was a lot of problems. But I think over the last two years in particular, Haaland and Ødegaard have taken on more responsibility and become leaders for the team while a lot of the players that started out really young have grown individually, but also together.
So you have a slight sense of this being a bit like a club side in the sense that they just know each other really well and they've been through a couple of qualifiers already together. There has been a lot of focus in the Norwegian press about just the spirit of the team and the togetherness. It's a bit of a cliche, but you can't really do well at the World Cup without it.
It has been a long time since we've felt that the Norwegian national team has been this unified. They talk about playing board games a lot in the hotel together where you have 12 or 15 people joining instead of just two or three. We threw a party to celebrate the qualification in November at the town hall, which also just unified the team and the people in a way that we haven't really seen before. Even the assistant coach broke down crying because he could see how much it meant to the people.
So there has been a lot of focus on that and I think Solbakken deserves a lot of credit because it's not always easy to do that for an international team and particularly not a national team that has been plagued by failure for 24 years.