Soccer-Clinical Norway hand Italy painful 3-0 defeat
Soccer Football - World Cup - European Qualifiers - Group I - Norway v Italy - Ullevaal Stadion, Oslo, Norway - June 6, 2025 Norway's Antonio Nusa celebrates scoring their second goal Lise Aserud/NTB via REUTERS
OSLO (Reuters) -Norway stunned Italy with a 3-0 win on Friday, handing the visitors a humiliating start to their World Cup qualifying campaign.
In Group I, Norway lead the standings with nine points after three matches. Italy were playing their first match in the qualifying campaign.
The soaking wet home crowd had reason to cheer after 14 minutes when Alexander Sorloth timed his run perfectly onto a through ball from Antonio Nusa and slotted it home from close range.
Nusa lit up the night with a moment of brilliance after 34 minutes, controlling a pass with a slick first touch, bursting past two Italian defenders with a dazzling run, and drilling it in from the edge of the box.
The first-half rout continued when another through ball from Martin Odegaard found an unmarked Erling Haaland, who rounded Italy keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma to score Norway's third just before the break.
The continued pouring rain cooled the match down in second-half with Norway coming closest with substitute Patrick Berg sending a screamer into the post just after the hour mark, but no more goals were scored.
(Reporting by Tommy Lund in Gdansk, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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