City Watch: Haaland off the mark for Norway

The 2026 World Cup is underway and multiple Manchester City stars have started their campaign in the States. 

Norway kickstarted their campaign with a comfortable 4-1 victory over Iraq, and it only took our Norwegian Viking under half an hour to open the scoring.  

Erling added to his goal tally just before half time with a typical high press goal, which us Blues have seen many times over the past couple of years. 

Our number nine will have to keep up this scoring form if he is to add a World Cup golden boot to his impressive three Premier League ones. 

Elsewhere, Rodri’s Spain were on the end of a huge shock result in their opener, with Cape Verde holding them to a 0-0 draw in Atlanta.  

The star of the show for the African debutants was 40-year-old goalkeeper Vozinha, who dealt with everything that came his way, earning himself the player of the match award. 

Our Ballon d’Or was understandably frustrated at the end of the game as shown in his post-match interview.  

When questioned on Cape Verde’s success, Rodri made his view clear on the tactics of the West African side, stating, “They don’t get past midfield.”  “It wasn’t meant to be. There’s little to complain about,” he continued. 

“We couldn’t put it in. We created chances but couldn’t finish. The positive thing is that they barely created anything against us. We need to improve our finishing.” 

I am sure Rodri will lead Spain through to the knockout stages of the competition, however this was an unexpected bump in the road for our midfielder. 

As we know our Belgium man Jeremy Doku showed his talents at the end of the 2025/26 season, with two crucial goals vs Everton back at the start of May keeping our title dreams alive, adding to his goal and assist in the FA cup semi-final.  

His campaign got underway on Monday against Egypt in Seattle, facing our very own Omar Marmoush, resulting in a 1-1 draw.  

Elsewhere, Tijjani Reijnders and Nathan Ake made an appearance for The Netherlands in a 2-2 draw vs Japan, with a dramatic late equaliser from Daichi Kamada helping Samurai Blue rescue a point.