Surprised? Then you haven’t been paying attention.
Norway just beat Brazil, 2-1, to reach its first-ever quarterfinal, and the wildest part is that it wasn’t even a smash-and-grab. Norway had nearly 70% possession. Norway controlled the tempo. Norway had Erling Haaland, the only superstar who showed up today. Brazil had 34 percent possession, a missed penalty, a missed sitter, and now a very long flight home.
The five-time champions are out in the round of 16. Sit with that. Then remember Norway has never — not once, not ever — lost to Brazil. Four games before tonight, zero defeats. Make it five.
Here are my four takeaways from a night Norwegian football will never forget:
(Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Let’s cut to the chase and say the truth. Carlo Ancelotti’s team simply wasn’t good enough. They lost their aura. The “jogo bonito” is long gone. Brazil set up like a provincial — read that again, Brazil, at a World Cup, barely touching the ball — and there was zero swagger in their play, zero Brazilian identity, zero of anything that makes that legendary yellow shirt mean something. Just a gray, joyless side waiting to counter.
And when the moments came, the finishing was criminal. Ørjan Nyland saved Bruno Guimarães’s first-half penalty. Then Endrick, played clean through by Vinícius Júnior, produced a first touch so heavy it needed its own boarding pass and poked the sitter wide. Endrick perhaps showed why Ancelotti was so reluctant to use him in this tournament. That’s the game, right there.
Neymar’s stoppage-time penalty was useless, and the trash-talking between him and Nyland before and after the penalty was quite frankly an embarrassment for the former superstar now in the twilight of his career. Brazil will miss the World Cup quarterfinals for the first time in 36 years. On this evidence, nobody should be shocked.
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The historic weight of this result is hard to overstate. Brazil, out before the quarterfinals for the first time since 1990. The wait for a sixth star now stretches beyond 2002 into a sixth straight World Cup — territory this nation has never known.
Tactically, Ancelotti got it wrong. He surrendered midfield to Ødegaard and company, turned Brazil into a Catenaccio (tactically defensive door-bolt) side, and asked an aging spine — Casemiro, Danilo, Marquinhos, all thirtysomethings — to survive Norway’s press. Japan exposed those legs a week ago. Norway buried them.
But let’s be honest: this was bigger than one game plan. This Brazilian team is flawed at its core — old in the wrong places, timid in possession, and toothless in the box. The flaws that flickered in qualifying and against Japan showed up at the worst possible moment, in the biggest game. Flawed teams don’t survive knockout football. Brazil didn’t either.
(Photo by Stephen Nadler/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
