Erling Haaland has been the story of this World Cup since the group stage, and Saturday he finally got the stage everyone's been waiting for: Norway against England, with Harry Kane standing in the other net. It's Norway's first-ever quarterfinal appearance at a major tournament, and Haaland walks in with 7 goals through 5 games chasing the Golden Boot. Say what you want about Norway being the tournament's Cinderella — nobody's laughing at a team with Haaland leading the line.
Robbie Fox hyped Haaland ahead of kickoff with real Manchester City footage of the Norwegian superstar.
That hype was warranted. Kane and Haaland have basically been running a two-man Golden Boot race all tournament, and now they're on opposite sides of the same 90 minutes with a semifinal spot on the line. This is the matchup Dave Portnoy circled above everything else going on Saturday, and Saturday had a LOT going on.
Rating My Sports Today (I readily admit Ill always rank horse racing basically higher than everybody else on earth) 1. England vs Norway 2. Argentina vs Switzerland 3. Saratoga 4. Red Sox go for 8 in a row 5. Mcgregor vs Holloway (probably won’t stay up for it
Portnoy's list wasn't hyperbole either — Argentina-Switzerland, 16 MLB games, Saratoga, the Red Sox chasing an 8th straight win, and McGregor-Holloway at UFC 329 were all stacked onto the same Saturday. But Norway-England is what people built their day around, and apparently their day started early. Barstool's own crowd got dubbed 'War Day,' with fans packed shoulder to shoulder outside well before kickoff, a scene that had nothing to do with any specific play on the field and everything to do with a stadium's worth of people ready to day-drink through a World Cup quarterfinal.
Drone footage captured the sheer size of the crowd gathered for War Day before the match even kicked off.
The bar scenes matched the street scenes. Whether it was Norway fans, England fans, or just degenerates who had money on the total goals, the energy inside was every bit as chaotic as outside — arms up, drinks flying, the whole nine. It's the kind of reaction shot that could've come from any bar in the country Saturday, which is sort of the point: this game had the entire sports world's attention, not just the two countries playing.
Whatever happens on the field, the bigger story here might be what this game did off it — turning a Saturday afternoon into a national drinking event built around a single 90-minute window. Haaland's chasing history for Norway, Kane's chasing it for England, and everybody else was just chasing a buzz. Semifinal or no semifinal, that's a pretty good sports day.