Norway Team Sick: Claim of England Opponents Hit By ‘Sickness’ Overblown

England will play Norway in the quarter-finals of the 2026 World Cup on Saturday evening. Recently, a revelation has been doing the rounds – several members of the Norway playing staff are thought to be ‘sick’.

Several media outlets in the UK, including The Sun, The Telegraph and TalkSPORT have been whipped up into a frenzy, claiming that a ‘number’ of Norway’s players are struggling with illness and that there are ‘tensions’ within the camp as a result.

This is true, to an extent. One of Norway’s players, Marcus Holmgren Pedersen, missed out on their 2-1 win over Brazil due to being ill, while Jorgen Strand Larsen also has a fever [via Dagbladet].

So, while a ‘number’ of Norway’s players are confirmed to be sick, that number is a merely two at the moment. On top of this, Norway head coach Ståle Solbakken stated that Pedersen is now ‘fine’ – taking that number down to a measly one.

Despite this, Solbakken did make claims that there had been ‘coughing and rasping’ within camp, but also said that this had been ‘evenly scattered’ throughout the camp. He, himself, was spotted coughing ‘violently’ after their last 16 encounter.

What did Stale Solbakken say in his interview?

Speaking with Dagbladet after the Brazil victory, Solbakken said: “[Pedersen] didn’t have a fever and was training, but he felt like his body wasn’t quite keeping up. Ola talked to him in the morning and he was fine. Then I think it crept up on him – that he felt a little worse.

“We’ve really only had Jørgen who has had a fever, but then there’s been a bit of coughing and rasping evenly, scattered throughout. But there’s air conditioning, flights, changing rooms and all that. We’re over 50 people so it would be strange if one or the other didn’t come.

“I think, without being a doctor, that it’s a combination of the boy being young, he’s come to the World Cup and thought, “I’m going to be a backup for Julian [Ryerson]”. He’s had two games and played great, got a lot of impressions, his head is full, his body is full of impressions, and the system is collapsing a bit.”

Are claims that Norway are suffering from a ‘sickness bug’ overblown?

To be clear, no misinformation has been printed in any of the publications that we have referenced in this article. However, we would describe it as somewhat misleading.

Sensationalist headlines containing phrases such as such as ‘hit by sickness’ and ‘battling sickness bug’ are always going to capture the attention of audiences, but we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t call this sort of thing out.

It is a classic case of the media taking a non-issue and running with it – of course, they’re entitled to do that, but we’d suggest they have gotten ahead of themselves on this one.

Furthermore, now that the alleged ‘bug’ has been identified, one would assume that Norway will take precautions to prevent it spreading – any players who are ‘ill’ will likely be taken away from first team training for the time being.

On top of this, there has been no mention of any of Norway’s star players – such as Manchester City’s Erling Haaland and Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard – suffering from any kind of sickness.