England got the break they needed. Or maybe Norway got the one they didn’t. Depends on how you look at it.
With 55 minutes gone in the World Cup quarterfinal, Torbjorn Heggem poked the ball over the line at Hard Rock Stadium. Norwegian players mobbed him. Fans erupted. It looked like a 2-1 lead for the Scandinavians, who had already punched back once after Harry Kane’s earlier chance went nowhere.
Then the referee Clement Turpin got the call from upstairs. VAR wanted him to take a second look.
The issue was Erling Haaland. Before Martin Odegaard swung in the corner, Haaland shoved Elliot Anderson. It wasn’t a subtle bump. The Manchester City striker extended both arms and gave Anderson a legitimate push, knocking him off balance just enough that he couldn’t defend the set piece properly. England couldn’t clear, the ball bounced around, and Heggem forced it in.
Turpin walked over to the monitor. Watched it once. Watched it again. Then he made the call.
“After review, No9 of Norway pushed deliberately the defender before the ball was in play,” Turpin announced over the stadium speakers. “Final decision, corner be retaken.”
No goal. Norway’s fans went silent. England’s players exhaled.
On ITV, referee analyst Christina Unkel had flagged the play before the review even finished. “They are checking Haaland’s full extension of that push,” she said. “The precaution of VAR is whether or not that would have prevented [Anderson] from having meaningful impact and to defend that ball. I would be surprised if there was not a recommendation to overturn this goal.”
There was a wrinkle afterward. Instead of giving England a free kick for the foul, Turpin ordered the corner to be retaken. That felt weird to a lot of people watching. A push is a push. If it happened before the ball was in play, conventional logic says the attacking team loses possession, not gets a do-over. But FIFA’s new rule on fouls committed before set pieces apparently allowed for that outcome. The ball had to be put back in play from the same restart.
So Norway got another corner. They didn’t score from it. And England dodged.
It wasn’t the only moment of controversy involving Turpin in this game. Earlier, Harry Kane took a bump in the lead-up to Norway’s first goal, scored by Andreas Schjelderup in the 35th minute. England’s players wanted a whistle that never came. Turpin let it play. The goal stood.
That’s two borderline calls both ways in a knockout game. That’s how World Cup quarterfinals go sometimes. One team walks away feeling robbed. The other walks away feeling lucky. And everyone else just argues about it until the next match kicks off.
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