
OneFootball
Padraig Whelan·12 October 2020
🏆 Nations League Awards: Red hot Haaland, meme magic and taxi laughs

In partnership with
Yahoo sportsOneFootball
Padraig Whelan·12 October 2020
Erling Haaland is a truly frightening prospect, Luis Enrique has a great sense of humour and Germany broke their duck.
It was Nations League weekend and here are our first international awards for the new season.
Honestly at this point, we really are running low on superlatives for Norway superstar Erling Haaland.
He only scored his first goal for his country last month but he operates on a different level to anyone else and on Sunday night he proved it by nonchalantly knocking in a hat-trick.
We’ve heard of bring your parent to work days but never bring your partner to work days. If they existed, this Spanish reporter would have scooped the award for it on Saturday night.
When the England starting line-up was announced against Belgium, the inclusion of Mason Mount was largely pilloried by everyone. And that’s being kind.
So naturally it was the Chelsea man whose deflected strike gave his country an impressive comeback win. Of course it was.
Germany are a footballing powerhouse, one of the greatest nations ever to compete in the sport – which four World Cups and three European Championship wins prove.
But the Nations League really hasn’t been a happy hunting ground, with Saturday’s win in Ukraine their first ever in the competition after over two years of trying.
We don’t want to write Federico Chiesa off before he’s even kicked a ball for new club Juventus.
But they’ve committed a total of €50 million to him and his shocker of a miss for Italy won’t make his new club’s fans feel particularly pleased about that.
Anyone who loves football enough to have perused through the scorers for North Macedonia’s 3-3 draw at Estonia may have been shocked to see a familiar face on the scoresheet.
Let’s be honest, Luxembourg’s clash with Cyprus on Saturday afternoon wasn’t one that too many people were really going to be interested in.
But is that really an excuse for this attempt at a preview of the fixture in a TV guide blurb? At least we learned something about their culinary delights though.
As match previews go, The i’s one for today’s Cyprus v Luxembourg game is quite.... limited? –Â