Norway manager St\u00e5le Solbakken confirmed Manchester City striker Erling Haaland was released from the national squad at the weekend to allow him a period of rest.<\/p>\n
Solbakken dismissed Haaland ahead of Tuesday\u2019s friendly against New Zealand, but clarified the decision was not driven by fitness concerns. The Norway boss said he wanted to protect players who had been carrying heavy midweek workloads in recent weeks. “Everyone who has played a lot in the Champions League was told to go home, except Patrick Berg who refused to go home,” he revealed. “Everyone who has played regularly with midweek matches, or had some minor problems.” <\/p>\n
That management of minutes extends to Haaland, who will return to Manchester City and be available for domestic action. He will have time to recover before City\u2019s next fixture, a home match with Everton scheduled for Saturday.<\/p>\n
New Zealand manager Darren Bazeley welcomed the absence but acknowledged Haaland\u2019s influence. “I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s disappointing not to play against him, but it will be easier. He is a great goalscorer, when he is not on the pitch they are not as good.” <\/p>\n
Haaland, 25, has had a prolific start to the season. He has scored 12 goals in nine appearances and was held without a goal in only one match, a 2\u20130 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur in late August. Nine of those strikes have come in the Premier League, giving him an early lead in the Golden Boot race.<\/p>\n
Behind him in scoring are Bournemouth\u2019s Antoine Semenyo with six goals, and Burnley\u2019s Jaidon Anthony and Brentford\u2019s Igor Thiago on four. The national team\u2019s decision to rest players who have been heavily involved in midweek fixtures reflects a wider trend of managing workload for top-level attackers and protecting form across club and country commitments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haaland was sent home by Norway to rest, returning to Manchester City before the Everton match. Sat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3748,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961,238],"tags":[801,1047],"class_list":["post-3749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-manchester-city","tag-antoine-semenyo","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}