Norway will face England in a World Cup quarter-final on Saturday, having beaten the Ivory Coast and Brazil in the knockout phase – and their rise is not just down to Erling Haaland. The Manchester City striker, with seven goals at the tournament, is the poster boy alongside Martin Ødegaard, who captains both Arsenal and the national team. But of Norway’s 26-man World Cup squad, 17 play in Europe’s top four leagues – the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga and Serie A. The majority were mentored in Norway’s national youth football training system, the National Team School (NTS), established in 2013.
Håkon Grøttland, head of player development at the Norwegian Football Federation, said the country is now witnessing the result of more than two decades of planning to transform Norway – a country synonymous with winter sports – into a football nation. “When I started with the football federation in 2010, it was my dream that Norway could compete at the World Cup because we had too many years of talking about 1998,” he told BBC Sport.
“Norway's World Cup run stems from artificial pitches and a coaching revolution, not just Haaland.”
Grøttland attributed Norway’s success to two main factors: an investment in artificial pitches in the period 2000-2010 and a coaching revolution ignited by the establishment of the NTS. Since 2000, Norway has invested in a huge number of artificial pitches. Between 2016 and 2025, 539 were built, with a further 586 being renovated. For a country that experiences harsh winters, this had a big impact. “Football in Norway went from a summer sport to a whole year-round sport,” explained Grøttland. “Back in my day, we had to play on horrible pitches in the winter, on ice and things like that.”
During the 1990s, Norway were synonymous with an effective but workmanlike style of defensive football. Playing on predictable surfaces has led to a more technical style of football – epitomised by their skipper Ødegaard, 27. “It’s partly about artificial pitches, but it’s also about influences,” added Grøttland. “Everyone wanted something a little bit different. But now, this has gone too far because we don’t create enough defenders.”
Norway’s success is also underpinned by its economy: the country is one of the world’s richest thanks to significant oil reserves, the largest in Europe after Russia. The comparison with Scotland, a country of similar population size, is not favourable to the latter. Both nations spent 28 years away from the World Cup after 1998, but while Steve Clarke’s men failed to get past the group stage in 2026, Norway now stand on the verge of a semi-final. With a golden generation built on astroturf and collaboration over egos, the question is how far they can go.