Exclusive: Ex-England & Man Utd star 'worried' by Haaland - but knows how Three Lions can handle him
England must face down Norway’s Erling Haaland to make the World Cup semi-finals - but a former England star has a plan for handling the Manchester City man.
England won’t have long to celebrate their heroic victory in the Estadio Azteca. Ultimately, all that the Three Lions’ victory over Mexico did was to put a new challenge in their path: Erling Haaland’s Norway.
Haaland’s scoring record for his country is little short of terrifying. The Manchester City striker has a staggering 62 goals in just 54 caps, and has found the net in each of his last 14 competitive international matches – including the brace against Brazil which earned his side a famous win and set up a showdown against England.
If England are going to stand a chance of making it to the semi-finals, then they’ll have to find way to deal with one of the best and most in-form forwards in world football – and former England and Manchester United defender Wes Brown, speaking exclusively to 3 Added Minutes, has some thoughts about what England should and shouldn’t do.
Wes Brown: England are right to be ‘worried’ about Haaland – but can deal with him
“You’re always worried [about Haaland]. Always worried,” Brown told 3 Added Minutes. “But at the same time, he’s a player that everyone will have played against, they know him, and that’s the advantage.”
Brown, who earned 23 caps for England and was a member of the squad which reached the quarter-finals of the 2002 World Cup, believes that one player who is particularly familiar with Haaland – Arsenal’s Gabriel Magalhães – provided the Thomas Tuchel’s side with an object lesson in how not to handle him during Brazil’s last 16 defeat in New York.
“He has so much confidence. We’ve seen how he played against Brazil and there’s certain ways to play players like that… Gabriel was trying to fight him and I don’t think that’s the way at all. He loves that challenge.
“There’s players who are strong, who really take advantage of the physical side, and once they win that battle their game is in flow. That’s where Gabriel made a mistake – sometimes, just don’t get involved in it. Haaland thrives off a bit of a challenge.”
It’s certainly hard to envisage that Haaland would easily be bullied out of the match by either Ezri Konsa or his club team-mate Marc Guéhi. Instead, Brown believes that the best way to handle Norway’s most dangerous player is to take a more cautious approach and to focus on denying him space to get his shots away.
“We want to play the game as much our way as possible,” Brown continued. “Sometimes that one-on-one physical battle is probably not needed, because you can see he really enjoys that and gets a buzz off it.
“We can’t give space to him, he’s good in the air, he’s strong, over the top he’s good. You’ve got to be careful with him. They have got other players as well, but the main thing for me is they know him, they’ve played against him, and that gives me a little bit of confidence.”
Why England have ‘really good chance’ of getting past Haaland and Norway
While becoming the first international team to prevent Haaland from scoring in a competitive match since October 2024 will be a priority, Brown also drew optimism from England’s battling performance against Mexico in the round of 16.
“No matter what gets thrown in front of us, we’ve managed to handle it,” Brown said. “I think that’s more important than being a brilliant, flowing football team. That’s a big, big yes for me.
“It’s still going to be tough the next game, you can’t be taking Norway lightly, you have to really respect them, [but] we’ve got a really good chance now of getting into that semi-final if we play with the same attitude.”
Brown added that while England’s players may well be sweating over the best way to handle Haaland, their Norwegian counterparts will be every bit as worried about facing the Three Lions’ best players.
“If you ask any player in that tournament, Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham will be up there with the most dangerous players. We’ve just got to play our way, get in positions where we can get the ball to them in the box, and the way they’re playing at the moment they’ll punish teams, like Haaland has been doing for his team.”
It’s easy to imagine Saturday’s quarter-final ending up as a shootout between the most lethal centre-forwards in the game – but if England can find a way to shut an on-song Haaland down, they may just make it to a second semi-final in three World Cups.