Martin Ødegaard presented himself to the Swedish football audience with a strong 90 minutes in the European Championship Qualification match on Sunday. Next Saturday it will be with Real Sociedad.
Then the 20-year-old debuts on his new home ground. The Anoeta Stadium in San Sebastian has been upgraded a lot in recent months and now holds over 43,000 spectators.
The opponents are La Liga leaders Atlético Madrid with coach Diego Simeone.
This is one of the better national games I’ve played in. It was solid and compact, and we were dangerous in transitions, said Ødegaard after the 1-1 draw against Sweden.
“I think we deserved three points.”
Ødegaard scores very highly on the player ratings in Norwegian newspapers. He played in a free role behind Joshua King on Sunday.
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Against Atletico Madrid, Ødegaard meets one of the world’s best defences. He can’t count on a lot of room in that game. Real Sociedad have four points after three games. Ødegaard became the match winner in the away victory over Mallorca.
Swedish newspapers believe that Sweden did not play their best on Sunday. We got ourselves a Lagerbäck lesson, writes Simon Bank in Aftonbladet.
He also believes that Swedish national team manager Janne Andersson made a mistake when he dropped striker Marcus Berg.
Spain tops the European Championship qualification group with 18 points in six games. Sweden is number two with 11 points, ahead of Romania with 10, and Norway on nine.
The Norwegian team has a difficult October to look forward to, when they will play Spain in Oslo and Romania away.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
