Astrid Haugen has just transferred from PSG to City, with the WSL about to begin, she has more going on in her life than ever. What happens when a certain someone enters her life? Will it make her life much harder? Or maybe easier?
Today, it's was Norway vs Sweden and Axel, Gabrielle and I are going to watch Erling play.
The match is in a few hours and Erling has already left to prepare. I'm currently at Gabrielle's before we leave to get to the stadium which takes and hour to get to. Once she's ready, we take her car to stadium.
When we arrive at Ullevaal, which is both the women's and men's Norway team home ground, fans were screaming outside of the stadium as they began to one by one recognise who we were. This resulted in Axel waking up but it was fine because he was going to wake up anyway by the time the match started.
We arrived half an hour before kick off meaning the stadium was of course swarming with people. Erling had told us to use a certain back way that was designed for friends and family of the players wouldn't have any trouble entering due to fans.
The security let us in within one glimpse so I'm guessing they knew we were coming.
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I managed to get a little picture in of me and Axel to which I posted on Instagram before the match once we had got to our usual seats. Since Gabrielle and her family are regular visitors here, they have allocated seats more times than not that are usually in reserved. I on the other hand, get free tickets and a few other perks due to being a player here myself, but more times than not I only ever come here if I'm playing, I don't really come for many of Erling's games here because us Norwegians can get hectic.
@Astrid.Haugen9
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MartinØdegaard loving the kit I must say😍
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The match began, with Sweden kicking off, with both teams had a very fair share of equal chances and opportunities in the first 20 minutes.
Martin had crossed the ball from the left into the box as Erling began to sprint towards it. I knew Sweden had no chance at saving a header from Erling, and I was completely right as he was the first to score for us in the match sending the crowd into cheers and applause.
This gave the stadium momentum for the remainder of the first half with chant after chant spreading throughout the stadium.
With this 1 goal lead Sweden we're not sitting comfortably in the match at the moment and we're applying a lot of pressure on Norway hoping that we'd maybe crack just a little bit so that they can slip through and score.
We continued to deny Sweden any chances and early into the second half we were rewarded with a penalty which Erling took. I could tell a lot was going through his mind at the moment, but he already knew where he was going to shoot. He always does. One of his key things he does, is he plans before the match if he is in a penalty situation where he is going to shoot and how he is going to do it. Most people wouldn't know that as most players do just choose in the moment, but that's most of the time why more times then not it is saved.
Erling decided to go bottom right and sent the keeper the opposite way. Gabrielle and I began the cheer and clap as the stadium began to sing Erling's signature chat in Norwegian and we joined in.
However, this was short lived as Sweden decided they weren't going to let us settle with a clean sheet. The score turned to 2-1.
We scored again making it now 3-1 and there was 10 minutes left, and Swedens chance of even drawing to us was becoming less and less likely for them.
We had 4 minutes of Extra time and they used that to their advantage to slip in one more going so the match ended on 3-2.
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Me and Gabrielle went to go and meet the boys after, and they had said Erling was giving his quick post match interview. In the meantime, I ended up speaking to Martin Ødegaard for a bit.
"So this is the famous Åksel then?" He joked taking him into his arms and he began to tickle him. "Yeah here he is, I still can't believe it's been a year since I've seen you." I say in shock. "Exactly, last time I saw you, you were only a few week's pregnant." He recalls and I laugh. "I know, it was when I came to play at Emirates." I try to remember. "Yes, and your team absolutely wrecked us lot." He continues. "Oh that was a close one I won't lie." I said as he looked back down at Axel still in his arms. "He's actually falling asleep you know." Martin begins to turn his attention back to Axel. "Really?" I look to his arms and to my surprise he actually was. "Well I'll be calling you more often." I state in a sarcastic tone to which he finds amusing.
Just then Gabrielle appears again, only this time with Erling beside her.
"Oh hello mr man of the match." I tease. "Oh shut up." He looks down and chuckles to himself. Martin and I talked for a little while longer with Erling butting into the conversation every now and then. But soon the conversation moved to finding out of Norway had mad it into the World Cup or not. It was looking likely that they were but it all depends on the opponent Latvias score tonight.
Once we waited for Erling to get changed since he has always been the slowest when getting changed, we left the stadium and we had been attacked by fans even trying to get a glimpse of the Haaland Jr as they called him.
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The rest of the day we celebrated Erling's two goals with his family and went out for dinner but barely anything happened afterwards, but my match was next and I knew it was going to be interesting, wether it'll be in a good way or bad way I don't know.
A/n Guys I just wanted to clarify that in this book Norway will go to the Qatar 2022 World Cup although they didn't make it in real life, I'm not sure what country they'll replace yet but I'll let you know soon x
