The new Norwegian school Haaland, Ødegaard and more: who are the new talents of the Scandinavian football

Norwegian football lives on moments. If you search on YouTube "Norwegian football", among the first results you got there are videos about the most excitant new talents from the Scandinavian nation or about the old golden generation which qualified for the round of 16 at France '98 World Cup (after beating Brazil at the group stage). Norway is a small State, so it's normal that there are generations luckier than others. However, by working on the youth sectors and concentrating on the development of talent, you can ease the emerging of new talents in short time periods. So, twenty years after the last time, Norway seems once again to be producing talents of good calibre. Haaland, Ødegaard, King, Berge, Ajer, Thorsby, Milan's newest acquisition Hauge and Sørloth are all guys who have the spotlight on in this moment, and they are the protagonists of the revival of the Scandinavian aesthetic. After Iceland's exploit at Euro 2016 and Russia 2018, the new Norway presents itself with an almost supernatural aura, with all these players looking like cyborgs came to Earth to make theirs the football.

According to what we can watch on Instagram, fashion is not so central in the interests of these guys - Joshua King is a very exception in comparison, as his hypebeast looks prove -, who often prefer to be photographed while they are wearing the tracksuits of their sponsors. What caught my eyes is the originality of the Instagram posts of one of these Norwegian. I'm talking about Erling Braut Haaland, who certainly has an out of ordinary use of the social networks and who also already has a personality, a defined status, also proven by the celebration he ideated for the (lots of) goals he scores. His pics express how much he is different from the others: we can watch him at boasting his speed on a dirt road, or occupied in chopped some wood or working the land on a tractor, as if these activities are common for a successful young footballer like him. Even if, confidentially, nothing beats the photo published last February 15, in which Haaland poses with the Bundesliga best player of the month award in one hand and the "Rookie of the Month" award in the other while wearing a t-shirt with an eloquent print: "The devil is jealous of me".  

In a football more and more full of very skilled guys with the ball at their feet, for once a slew of future champions are not churned out by the usual academies of central and southern Europe. Norway could soon assemble a strong team, following in the footsteps of what Belgium, another small and never relevant nation on the European football map, has done in the last decade. It's appropriate to say it: the Norway of football, today more than ever, has on a reckless hype, and it doesn't matter if last Thursday they lost the play-off with Serbia to access the final phase of Euro 2020 because the new Norwegian school will still have many opportunities to exalt themselves.