Erling Haaland scored again and Norway moved even closer to qualifying for the World Cup for the first time since 1998 by beating Estonia 4-1 in Oslo on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The win virtually secures a spot for the high-scoring Norwegians in next year\u2019s tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Norway has a vastly superior goal difference compared to second-placed Italy, which is six points behind in Group I. Italy plays at Moldova later Thursday.<\/p>\n
If Italy fails to win that game, Norway will advance while Italy will have to settle for the playoffs where the four-time World Cup champion was shockingly eliminated in the past two editions. Norway travels to play Italy on Sunday.<\/p>\n
All the goals came in the second half. Haaland scored twice in a six-minute span to increase the lead to 4-0 after Alexander S\u00f8rloth put the hosts 2-0 ahead shortly after the break.<\/p>\n
Haaland has scored 14 of Norway\u2019s European-best 33 goals in seven group-stage games. The Manchester City striker was born two years after Norway last reached the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Later Thursday, France needs to beat Ukraine to qualify from Group D with a game to spare, and Portugal can also advance with a win at Ireland in Group F.<\/p>\n
England, the first European nation to have secured qualification, plays Serbia in Group K.<\/p>\n
Iceland won at Azerbaijan 2-0 in Group D earlier and Hungary took three points in a 1-0 victory at Armenia in Group F.<\/p>\n
Reporting by The Associated Press.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
Want great stories delivered right to your inbox?\u00a0<\/i>Create or log in to your FOX Sports account<\/u><\/i> and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily!<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY Erling Haaland scored again and Norway moved even closer to qualifying for the World Cup for the first time since 1998 by beating Estonia 4-1 in Oslo on Thursday. The win virtually secures a spot for the high-scoring Norwegians in next year\u2019s tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Norway […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}