A hot potato of an occasion passed with minor blemishes off the pitch. Erling Haaland stole the attention with a hat-trick on it, rendering his early double penalty miss a discordant memory, and the upshot was that Norway could look with clear heads toward a near-certain first World Cup appearance in 27 years. A win over Estonia next month will confirm their presence; Egil Olsen, their manager at France 1998, watched as Israel offered scant opposition to Europe’s most ruthless attacking force.
It also means Italy, already sore from successive failures to qualify, are likely to face another playoff date. Perhaps Norway’s domination of Group I should prove little surprise: the Israel manager, Ran Ben Shimon, said afterwards that they and Spain are the two best teams on the continent.
