The last time Gabriel Magalhaes and Erling Haaland met on a football field, the former borderline headbutted the latter. In a game between Arsenal and Man City in the heat of a title race in April 2026, the Norwegian, though, stayed on his feet rather than go down clutching his head. It perhaps helped as the Brazilian didn’t receive a red card.
After the game, Haaland had said: "I think most agree with me. If I go down like any other guy, it’s a red card. It’s not something I would do. My father taught me to stay on your feet." The Premier League said because the action wasn’t excessively aggressive or violent, the yellow wasn’t upgraded to a red.
In the season before that, the roles were reversed with Haaland playing the naughty boy. After a late City equaliser in September 2024, Haaland instinctively threw the ball at Magalhaes’s head. The disappointed Brazilian, who had buried his face in his jersey following John Stones’ leveller in the eighth minute of injury time, had his back to goal when the Norwegian decided to throw the ball on his head. To be fair to the centre-back, he didn’t react.
Following the game, Magalhaes called it a ‘war’. For his part, the centre-forward had said he didn’t regret throwing the ball. Apart from those two instances, they have tangled with each other on several occasions. There was the time Haaland’s jersey was torn after a confrontation. Who remembers the Haaland Snapchat where the Norwegian put up a photo of the Brazilian all over him during a game with the caption: “Bro, I have a wife”? There was the other time when Magalhaes lost his studs in a battle. In retaliation, the defender pulled Haaland’s shorts and asked him to retrieve the boot. There was the time when the Brazilian celebrated an Arsenal goal by screaming into the Norwegian’s face. Fair to say there’s real animosity with copious amounts of bad blood.
Hostilities — or war as Magalhaes called it — between two of the Premier League’s most combative players will resume in the unfamiliar surroundings of East Rutherford in NYNJ on Sunday afternoon. It’s why the game between Norway and Brazil will have a significant Premier League flavour.
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At Arsenal, the pair of Magalhaes and William Saliba have become the best centre-back pairing in the division thanks to their reading of the game. And it’s generally the former who engages, the one who enjoys a physical battle, while the latter is more stand-offish, even though the Frenchman also relishes a physical battle. The 28-year-old, considered one of the best centre-backs in world football now, generally ranks highly among the Arsenal side when it comes to clearances, duels and tackles.
But for the Selecao, he’s playing a different role. In fact, Carlo Ancelotti has seemingly made the defender responsible for playing it out from the back. He’s second in terms of accurate passes (397, only behind Rodri’s 435); his Brazil teammate and fellow centre-back, Marquinhos, is at 358. It kind of suggests that there is some sideways passing going on. With Brazil dominating possession in all three of their group games as well as in their round of 32 game against Japan, this number is of course not a surprise. What was a surprise, though, was him popping up with a cross into the box from the left half space against Japan, the cross headed home by Carlos Casemiro. He has generally not come up with those kinds of balls at Arsenal.
Another surprising way they have used him is that he has been involved 802 times in the four games (involvement here includes any action). A metric that puts him in third place overall after the round of 32 fixtures.
Against Norway, whether or not Magalhaes, part of Brazil’s starting XI at a major tournament for the first time, does these things, he will be forced to engage with the forward in multiple ways. The 25-year-old can play off the shoulder, and he will target the space behind the two centre-backs as Brazil will not employ a low block. In a foot-race, Haaland will always win, so what tactics will Brazil use? Against Arsenal, Haaland has scored six times in eight league matches. Some of those goals were breakaway goals.
If the five-time champions do play like they normally do with defenders pushing up, that could be an area to profit for Norway and Haaland because Brazil’s full-backs, midfielders and the pairing of Marquinhos and Magalhaes aren’t mobile enough to catch Haaland in a foot race (during league games, Saliba is the one who generally excels at that job).
And Martin Odegaard, an Arsenal colleague of Magalhaes, will look to release Haaland soon enough if an opportunity presents itself. And this is another fascinating difference between the defender and the forward. The 25-year-old is seldom involved; only 99 involvements across three matches but he has still managed to score five times. It’s why he’s deadly in the opposition box. He can be on the fringes for a long time but he’s always tuned in and can do a lot of damage.
One of the quirkier stats in international football is the Selecao’s record against Norway; it’s the only country they have faced without a win (played four, lost two and drawn two). If they are to set that record right, one has a feeling that their centre-back has to win his contest.