Defender Leo Ostigard is confident in his team's ability, even as he says the Scandinavian side has no pressure on them this summer
By James Benge Mar 27, 2026 at 9:42 am ET • 10 min read 
Getty Images For a country with a historically mixed record, competing in their first major international tournament in a quarter of a century, Norway promise to occupy a curious position come this summer's World Cup. Most teams in their position ought simply to be viewed as being happy to make up the numbers. Then again, most teams that fulfil those criteria don't have Erling Haaland, Martin Odegaard and a host of other names drawn from Europe's top leagues.
In the last few years, Norway were dark horses for tournaments they hadn't even qualified for. It seems like half a decade or more that they have been the coming force of the European game, expectations spurred on by the great scattering of players coming from the artificial turfs of Europe's north across the continent. Now that they have achieved a return to the biggest stage for the first time since 1998, the pressure should be overwhelming.
And yet in the company of Genoa's Leo Ostigard, a veteran of the failed pursuit of Euro 2024, it feels like Norway have nothing to worry about at all. Now they're there, it's all bonus from here on out. "The main job was to go to the World Cup," Ostigard said. "The good thing now is that there aren't great expectations. We don't need to go to the quarterfinal, to the semifinal, we can take it game after game.
"Of course, now everyone has seen how good a team we are, but still, it's quite calm in the group. We know that we can go far if we manage to play well, but there's not a target that we need to hit."
The contrast with some of the other European representatives at the World Cup is vast. England, France, Spain, Germany, all will arrive in North America with the weight of an expectant nation on their shoulders. Ostigard would challenge whether Norway should be viewed alongside that elite class, perhaps the upcoming friendlies against the Netherlands and Switzerland will prove or disprove that idea further.
'We didn't know how to win'
One thing is clear, any team that can do to Italy what Norway did in the qualifying campaign deserves to be taken seriously. The 3-0 win in Oslo and the 4-1 win in Milan that followed were swaggering statements of intent by Stale Solbakken's side, who romped to top spot of what looked a really tricky group, eight wins from eight putting them ahead of the Azzuri and Israel. Ostigard dates the rise of the Landslaget to a little earlier, topping a Nations League group that included Austria and Slovenia, a sign to this team that they could achieve what would be required in the following months.
It helped too, he said, that they ran into Italy at just the right moment. Victories over Moldova and Israel had them safely ensconced in top spot before their opponents had played a game. Key Italian players such as Alessandro Bastoni and Nicolo Barella were feeling the bruises of Inter's Champions League defeat; they and their teammates were ill-prepared for the sort of smash mouth transitional play that had their hosts 3-0 up at the break, dreaming of next summer Stateside.
Leo Ostigard celebrates after the UEFA Nations League 2024/2025 League B - Group 3 match between Norway and Austria at Ullevaal Stadium on September 9, 2024 in Oslo, Norway. Annelie Cracchiolo/DeFodi Images via Getty Images "Sometimes you can just feel when things are clicking," says Ostigard, who was watching on from the bench on that day. "It had been the same team for a long time, games where you ended up really down and felt like you had been failing a lot.
"In the end you get older. At the start, with Stale as a coach, we were a very young team. We didn't know how to win, how to play against these big teams. When you try and fail a lot, you learn. Now we are calm. We do what we're going to do.
"It's a bit like Bodo/Glimt. They are calm. They don't think too much. It's the same in the national team, there's a feeling that you're in control compared to before, where you were maybe stressing over a big game, a top opponent."
Comparing the national team with Bodo/Glimt, the side that took the Champions League by force before being downed by Sporting CP in the last 16, is apt. Both the national side and the champions play in a way that feels identifiably Norwegian, an organised defense whose ability to win possession in prime spots unleashes a string of counterattacking opportunities. To do that requires all 11 players in harmony. You can't just dump the ball to your best players, even if they are as good as Norway's.
"In the early days of this team, the 'problem' for us was that we had Erling, we had Martin," Ostigard explains. "In the start, we felt like, yeah, we have Erling, so we have to play his way. You have to work as a collective. It's not going to be up to two players."
Ostigard can't resist a shot across the bows at near neighbors who are now struggling to coalesce into a collective around Alexander Isak, who is currently injured, and Viktor Gyokeres. "We actually just needed time. You see Sweden now, they're in a bad place. They've been changing a lot of players. They need time. They need to stay together in the bad moments. Maybe in two years they will be like 'wow, what a team we are now.'
"You see Bodo, 2018 they were playing in the second division. They've been working together for 10 years. Now they look like a proper team, I played against them when they'd just been promoted and, well, they didn't look like they do now."
Norway's superstars
Of course, the ideal circumstances involve the forging of that club-style bond while still rolling out some of the best players in the world. That is where Norway find themselves with Haaland and Odegaard. Neither have been in the best of form, even as their club sides duke it out for the Premier League title.
Odegaard's leadership qualities have particularly come under the microscope, with one of his antecedents as Arsenal captain, Tony Adams, suggesting the armband should go to Declan Rice instead. That is certainly not a view shared in the Emirates Stadium dressing room, nor is it one that would get much backing in the Norway squad, which Odegaard has captained for half a decade.
"I see some stuff from England about Martin," says Ostigard. "Remember, he signed for Real Madrid at 16 years old, in the dressing room with Cristiano Ronaldo, Sergio Ramos. He has experienced a lot since he was 15 and playing in the national team.
"He's a really calm leader. He's not the guy who screams the most, but he projects a feeling to every player that you are safe around him. He helps you. He's good with new players coming in. He's a guy you can trust in. He has a lot of experience from all these places he has been. You learn a lot when you are in the dressing room with Ronaldo.
"You are safe around him. There's a reason that Arteta said everyone chose him. That's it. When you're outside, a normal person talking about him as a captain, you don't really know what's going on inside the dressing room. They don't understand how he is, how important he can be in a group. It's easy to sit outside and say he's not the right captain. When you are in the same environment as him, you understand why he is."
Odegaard will be missing for Norway's friendlies this month, the FA Cup quarterfinal against Southampton immediately after the break a target as he bids to shake off the knee issue that has sidelined him since mid-February. In his absence the armband could well be bestowed on Haaland, who will doubtless view these upcoming games as an ideal opportunity to get back among the goals. He has just five in 19 games for City since the turn of the year, but the red of the Norway shirt gets him charging forward like a bull.
Haaland has a ludicrous 55 goals in 48 games for Norway, breaking his country's 87-year-old scoring record at the age of just 24. You have to go back to October 2024 to find an international match in which he did not score. Since that 5-1 loss to Austria, it is a record of 21 goals, three assists in 11 caps. All of those games ended with Norway victorious. The one in which he did not feature was a 1-1 draw with New Zealand.
CBS Sports "He's addicted to scoring goals," Ostigard says of Haaland. "That's not a joke. He really is. If he scores three, he wants to score four.
"In the box, Erling is something special. He's always first on the ball. He reads the situation so well and it's just so hard to pick him up." That latter line is particularly hard to believe given the 6ft 5in colossus with the shock of blond hair. He's not really the sort you should easily lose track of.
"He's always on your back and then bang, he's in front of you, with so much power. I asked him, 'do you really train on that? How are you always in the right positions?' He said to me it's something he just has in his body. It's not like he practiced to always be in the right places. You can always practice your right foot, your left foot, but in the moment when there's three, four, five players, you have to be able to smell where the ball is going. That's something you get with experience, but he has it in his body. It's just there. He was born with that."
Battling for places
While Haaland and Odegaard might be the match-winners in moments, Ostigard's initial point about the strength of the team shines through. Right across the squad, there are battles for starting roles. In attack, the likes of Andreas Schjelderup, Jens Petter Hauge, and even Alexander Sorloth might have their eye on a spot with Antonio Nusa on the flanks. Frederik Bjorkan might hope his heroics with Bodo/Glimt allow him to snare the starting left back spot from Wolves' David Moller Wolfe. Then there is Ostigard.
After making his debut in March 2022, the center back played every minute in 18 of Norway's next 20 competitive international matches. He was firmly established in Solbaken's first XI until a difficult move away from Napoli to Rennes and a subsequent loan to Hoffenheim. With his form faltering and injuries slowing him, he could only watch on that afternoon as Italy came into town. By the time he got on the pitch, the game was already won. One of the greatest days in the country's footballing history was "the hardest day in my career."
It also proved to be a spur for the 26-year-old, who moved to Genoa "to feel myself, to have the energy I normally have, to be the Leo I know that I can be." It looks to be working out rather well, all the more so since the change of management in Liguria. Daniele De Rossi's appointment has spurred results from Il Grifone, who sit ninth in the Serie A table since his November appointment, and Ostigard, who has played the full 90 in every league game for which he has been available since the turn of the year.
"I remember in the first team meeting before the first game, I wanted to go out and smash someone after that," Ostigard says of his boss. "You need a lot of energy to instill passion in players. He suits the team really well. My feeling is he's made for the club. Genoa as a club is something special, you know the type of player you need in the club, one who suits the fans. Like them, you have to have a lot of energy.
"With De Rossi coming in, there was just a feeling that you want to fight for that guy. He gives you the energy you really want to have in games. Then football is lovely again."
How much lovelier it will be in the summer when, barring any late setbacks, Ostigard and his team mates will join the small handful of Norwegian footballers to have represented their country on one of the sport's biggest stages. And if what you've read so far has been enough to convince you that this team have the quality to make some real noise at the tournament, well you might have to convince Ostigard too.
"We will take it game after game. I don't think we are going to think too high about the team," he says. "We don't know exactly how good we are."
The other 47 teams might just be inclined to hope that Norway don't find an answer to that before the summer is out.
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