Haaland: Norway must be realistic on World Cup ambitions

Erling Haaland quipped Norway must get real when it comes to their World Cup aspirations, but he is enjoying the ride nevertheless.

Haaland netted twice as Norway beat Senegal 3-2 at New York New Jersey Stadium to book their place in the knockout stage.

In three previous appearances at the World Cup, Norway had advanced past the first round only once, reaching the round of 16 in 1998, which was the last time they qualified for the finals.

And while Haaland is revelling in Norway's excellent form on the back of a 12-game winning streak in competitive fixtures, he is not getting carried away.

"To qualify for the first time in 28 years and going through the group stage, I would say, yes. To win the World Cup, absolutely not," he told Fox.

"We've won 12 competitive games in a row now. I'm part of something special, making history, and I'm extremely proud to be Norwegian."

Haaland is the sixth player in World Cup history to score multiple goals in each of his first two appearances in the competition and just the second in the last 50 years after Harry Kane for England in 2018.

The Manchester City star is aiming to become only the third player to net 2+ goals in each of his first three appearances in the competition after Argentina's Guillermo Stabile in 1930 and Hungary’s Sandor Kocsis in 1954.

However, next up for Norway is France, who are ranked by Opta's supercomputer as second favourites to go all the way, and Haaland was pragmatic over his team's chances against Les Bleus.

"I don't care too much now [about playing France]," he said.

"We're through, we managed to get through, which is incredible, so I couldn't care too much about that game now.

"They're probably going to win against us, they're probably going to win the whole tournament."

Haaland has scored in 12 straight competitive appearances for Norway, including scoring multiple goals in each of his last six. He is the first Norwegian player to score in consecutive World Cup appearances.

"I think it's my speciality, to score goals," the 25-year-old added.

"It's like many others things, I'm just really good at scoring goals and I'm quite lucky. I don't know what I'm doing. It's just how it is."

Senegal, meanwhile, have lost both of their Group I games and go into their meeting with Iraq knowing they will likely need to win to progress as one of the best third-place teams.

"A tough match against a team that caused us problems; they were very clinical and scored two goals at the worst possible times," said Senegal coach Pape Thiaw.

"We need to focus on this last match and give everything to get the three points and keep hoping. It's difficult, but we're not dead yet."

Opta's predictive model gives Senegal a healthy 65.5% chance of progressing to the round of 32.