Erling Haaland will be the centre of attention in Dallas on Tuesday, but the Ivory Coast will be hoping to highlight some attacking talent of their own when they \u200btake on Norway in their World Cup Round of 32 clash.<\/p>\n
Norway’s one-man wrecking ball \u200chas four goals in his two appearances at the tournament and is set to return after being rested in the last group game against France, as were most of the Norwegian first-choice players.<\/p>\n
Haaland scored twice against \u200bIraq in Norway’s return to the World Cup after a 28-year absence and was \u200bat his predatory best as they beat Senegal to secure their progress after \u2060only two group games.<\/p>\n
Ivory Coast’s planning will concentrate on how to stop Haaland in what \u200bis sure to be a thorough examination of the West African team’s defence, which includes the \u200bhighly rated Ousmane Diomande, the 22-year-old who is expected to depart Sporting Lisbon for the English Premier League before next season.<\/p>\n
But coach Emerse Fae will also be looking to have his side on the front foot \u200band take the game to Norway – and keep Haaland off the ball.<\/p>\n
The Ivorians have an exciting \u200barray of forward talent, led by teenager Yan Diomande, who is another dominating the club pre-season transfer market \u200cspeculation, \u2060and former Arsenal record signing Nicolas Pepe, who scored twice in their last match against Curacao and is reviving his reputation.<\/p>\n
There are nine attacking players in the Ivorian squad that Fae can pick from, including Inter Milan’s Ange-Yoan Bonny, who only switched his allegiance from France before the \u200btournament.<\/p>\n
“I think that spreading \u200bthe goals around \u2060is a real strength of ours, which we can use to catch our opponents off guard and be a threat from all over the \u200bpitch, including players coming off the bench to make a telling contribution,” \u200bsaid Fae.<\/p>\n
Norway’s \u2060coach Stale Solbakken said his decision to rest 10 first-team players against France was a “no-brainer” because fatigue had affected several of them.<\/p>\n
“This is simple. We did a summary after (their second game against) Senegal, \u2060and the \u200bentire defence and some midfielders were very affected,” he \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
Solbakken will be relieved the weather in Dallas should not be a factor, given the climate cooling in the stadium \u200bas the match has a midday kickoff.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":38302,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-38299","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The Ivorians have an exciting \u200barray of forward talent, led by teenager Yan Diomande.","published_date":"","news_description":"The Ivorians have an exciting \u200barray of forward talent, led by teenager Yan Diomande.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38301,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38299\/revisions\/38301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=38299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}