Erling Haaland kept scoreless by Kazakhstan's five-man defense in UEFA Nations League

Maybe the English Premier League teams struggling to contain Erling Haaland should consider employing the 5-4-1 formation that Kazakhstan used against Norway on Friday.

Kazakhstan's yellow-clad defenders swarmed around Haaland for the full 90 minutes of a 0-0 draw in the Nations League and kept the striker scoreless following his consecutive hat tricks in the Premier League.

Haaland failed to hit the target with any of his four shots during a match in which Norway had 65% of the possession and produced 19 shots to Kazakhstan’s four.

Haaland has seven goals in three Premier League matches for Manchester City this season and hadn’t been held scoreless for nearly a month — since City won the Community Shield in a penalty shootout over Manchester United on Aug. 10. Haaland did find the target in the shootout of the Community Shield, though.

Haaland has been the joint top scorer with six goals in each of the past two editions of the Nations League. Overall, he has 31 goals in 34 matches for Norway.

He still needs two more goals to match Norway record-holder Jørgen Juve, who scored 33 from 1928-37.

Norway is in League B of the Nations League, in a group with Austria and Slovenia, who were playing later.

Also later, France was hosting Italy, Belgium was playing Israel in neutral Hungary, and Wales was facing Euro 2024 quarterfinalist Turkey.

In League B, Cyprus beat Lithuania 1-0 with a first-half goal from Ioannis Pittas.

The European qualifying groups for the 2026 World Cup will be drawn in Zurich in December, likely with seedings decided by FIFA world rankings updated in November after Nations League group play ends.