Erling Braut Haaland has been pulverizing record after record for a few years now. This season, Manchester City's top striker has been phenomenal in the Premier League, while in his still-young career he has already scored 28 goals in 22 games in the Champions League as well. To be ranked among the best players ever, football fans often point to World Cups and European Championships, where the player in question must excel. Haaland competes for the relatively small Norway, which almost never manages to qualify for major final tournaments. That may change at the upcoming European Championships.
The chances that Norway will be active at the 2024 European Championship are high. This is all due to some rule changes. Since 2016, the number of countries allowed to participate has increased by 50% to 24. Countries can now also qualify through the Nations League, and in addition, Russia is excluded from participation. That country normally qualifies almost every edition. The tournament will be held in Germany, which is therefore automatically seeded. This is good news for Norway, as it frees up another spot through the qualifiers.
With 24 countries allowed to compete, the top two of each qualifying pool automatically qualify. The numbers three will play playoffs. In addition, 12 countries may go on to play playoffs through the Nations League. Of them, three eventually go to the European Championship. The countries eligible for the playoffs are countries that have not yet qualified for the European Championship, based on performance in the Nations League 2022/2023. Countries in the A category normally qualify as normal. Norway will be in the B League next tournament, which makes it extremely likely, if everything goes wrong in regular qualifying, to be among the 12 countries chosen.
Norway, however, has had a good draw. It is assigned to a group of five countries, where some groups have six. It is in a group with Spain, Scotland, Georgia and Cyprus. Based on the FIFA rankings, part of the group can already be predicted. Spain is ranked 7th and is therefore the expected group winner. In second place could well be Norway. The Scandinavians are 42nd in the FIFA rankings, while Scotland is only two places higher. Georgia is far behind them at 78th and Cyprus is even further down at 110th. The bookmakers are confident of the Norwegians' presence at the 2024 European Championship and even scale the country as 14th in the list of contenders with an odd of 60.00.
Norway thus seems to have to fight with Scotland for place two, but is almost certain of at least third place. Should it qualify, it could still go pretty far. With Haaland it has an absolute superstar, while, for example, Arsenal player Martin Odegaard can provide him with assists. In 2016, Wales has already shown how a small country can get far at a major final tournament.
It only had a few players of note. Gareth Bale was the absolute superstar, scoring three goals in the group stage. Aaron Ramsey gave four assists, the most of any player. So the Wales of 2016, without a lot of exceptional players besides Bale and Ramsey, is very similar to the Norway of Haaland and Odegaard. Scoring at the Euros would give Haaland's sublime career some extra shine. All 5.4 million Norwegian citizens will be keeping their fingers crossed very hard in the coming period that qualification goes well and that their star man does not suffer an injury.
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