Erling Haaland, Norway’s star striker, will start on the bench for his country’s World Cup group stage finale against Kylian Mbappé and France on Friday at Boston Stadium.
Norway has already qualified for the round of 32 with two wins in two matches, and coach Ståle Solbakken has opted to rotate his squad for the group-decider against France, which also has two wins. In total, Solbakken made 10 changes to his starting lineup.
The decision signals that Solbakken is more concerned about keeping his star players healthy than entering the round of 32 as the top seed in Group I.
Haaland has four goals in two matches for Norway and has the third-best odds (+650) to win the Golden Boot, trailing only Mbappé and Lionel Messi. Haaland scored a brace against Iraq in Norway’s World Cup opener and followed it with another brace against Senegal on Monday.
Haaland has scored in his last 12 competitive appearances for Norway and has scored at least one goal in 18 of his last 21 competitive national team games. He is the sixth player to score more than one goal in each of his first two career appearances at the World Cup, and only the second to achieve this in the last 50 years, after Harry Kane in 2018.
Norway has won 15 straight matches when Haaland score and is unbeaten all-time when he has a multi-goal game at 17W-0D-0L.
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