Every year at the beginning of August, the “Norway Cup” is held in Oslo. It is a large children’s and youth football tournament, the largest in the world, they claim, with some 30,000 boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 19 playing some 5,000 football matches. This year, there was also a team from Palestine, as well as teams from more than 20 countries worldwide, and certainly from small and large places all over Norway, including Erling Braut Haaland’s hometown, Bryne, in the south-west of the country, near the city of Stavanger, often referred to as the ‘oil capital’ because much of the country’s rich offshore oil is landed there.

If Haaland (26) wasn’t already a household name before the recently concluded FIFA Football World Cup, he is now known everywhere. He scored no fewer than seven goals before Norway lost to England in the quarter-final. England eventually became the third-best team, winning the bronze medal. Along with Norway, other small countries did well, too, such as Cape Verde and Belgium. People began to ask how small countries could do so well against large, populous countries, including those in Latin America, such as Argentina, which won the silver medal, while Spain secured gold and will be the reigning world champion in football until the next World Cup in 2030. It will be hosted by Morocco, Portugal and Spain, along with Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay as centenary hosts, marking a hundred years since the first FIFA World Cup was held in Latin America in 1930. True, no one can beat the celebratory football atmosphere that Latin American countries create—even overshadowing cricket tournaments when Pakistan and other Commonwealth countries do well. In future, let us see how well Pakistani teams can do in football while certainly continuing to do well in cricket.

Still, at top sporting events, men’s........

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