– I thought it was an April Fool joke.



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Caroline Graham Hansen canceled the score. Then she had to be helped off the field with an injury.

Graham Hansen on his way to the bench after injury. Vegard Wivestad Grøtt, Bildbyrån

Norway-Wales 1-0

ULLEVAAL STADIUM: Norway is more or less ready for the European Championship in the summer of 2022, after Wales was defeated in the national arena. Only a completely unthinkable total collapse in the last three matches can prevent another Norwegian championship. The match was characterized by the fact that the national team has not played matches since March. She received additional shadow when the clearly best player on the field, Caroline Graham Hansen, lay down and writhed in pain. She had to be helped off the field and replaced.

The injury probably occurred when he dribbled almost the entire Welsh team after 64 minutes. She lay on the grass for a long time and then after one inning, but she kept playing. However, five minutes later, it was all over. The Barcelona player went to the ground with no people dressed in yellow near her. The medical support staff helped her beyond the margins.

There, the 25-year-old made a brief attempt to see if her foot would hold, but the signal to the coaches bench was that it had to be replaced.

After the game, she said it was pain in the area around her Achilles tendon and lower leg that made her throw in the towel.

Thus, his second game at Ullevaal, and 85 with the national team, was not at all what he had dreamed of.

Graham Hansen with an ice pack around his ankle. Vegard Wivestad Grøtt, Bildbyrån

After an hour, Graham Hansen nailed the ball into the goal from more than 20 meters, after one of his characteristic forays. However, the referee was not impressed and admonished him to dive. Replays showed that Lisa-Marie Karlseng Utland was offside, but it was very difficult to understand why the referees thought she was an obstacle to a somewhat out of place Welsh goalkeeper.

– At first I thought it was an April Fool joke, it wasn’t. It’s a shame. I saw the concierge all the time and she saw me. I don’t know why he thought Lisa bothered the goalkeeper, he said after the game.

Graham Hansen was tricked into scoring and was injured shortly after.

Caroline Graham Hansen is downstairs. Håkon Mosvold Larsen, NTB

Post directly to the goal

Norway won, but otherwise little worked. Towards the end of the match, the guests were also fooled by a penalty kick, when the ball bounced off the hand of Maren Mjelde. The guests also burned a great opportunity.

Just as most of the men’s team played Austria on the same pitch a few weeks ago, there was little fluidity in the game for the Norwegian women. The misalignments were many, the players used too many touches, and on a couple of occasions it was luck alone that prevented Wales from punishing Norwegian carelessness with goals.

It was a bit symptomatic of the match that the imprecise post that put Norway in the lead. At least it seemed like it was Guru Reiten who tried to break through the middle repeatedly. Instead of finding a Norwegian front, the ball fell into the net behind goalkeeper Laura O’Sullivan. She tried to get the ball over the goal, but missed completely.

“Both,” Reiten replied with a smile, when asked if it was a good shot or a bad post.

Reiten’s post goes straight to the end. Vegard Wivestad Grøtt, Bildbyrån

Reiten and Graham Hansen were repeatedly allowed to take short corner kicks, with the Welsh unbelievably dispatching just one defender to give the duo resistance. Thus, the two got an easy match. That was also how the goal came.

– We were quite far from the level we have maintained for a long time, said coach Martin Sjögren after the match. I believed that it was first and foremost the Norwegian team that made the game go the way it was.

Reiten is congratulated after the winning goal. Jil Yngland, NTB

Back in Ullevaal

“Ladies and gentlemen, then we will probably welcome Wales and Norway,” said the speaker before the teams took to the field. The problem, of course, was that there was no one in the stands to receive the teams. The pandemic has effectively put an end to that kind of thing.

Both of them If we love and the national football anthem was played before the start of the game. In the latter, it was still sung about “our best men”, who “return to battle”. Regardless, the main message was firm. Here it was a matter of giving All for Norway.

It is one of the rarities that Norwegian First Ladies are allowed in the sports hall.

The previous occasions were in 2013 and 2016.

For much of the game, it was Graham Hansen who created the talk of Norwegian chances and good play.

A couple of good shot attempts in the first half, however, hit Wales blocking or on one occasion their overseas teammate. A couple of good posts were not taken care of well enough in front of goal.

Amalie Eikeland doubled the lead ten minutes before the break, but the shot from a good Norwegian counter-attack went flying.

Norway won and will play the European Championship in England. There, the game must be on a completely different level than Ullevaal.

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