‘It followed me’ – Haaland Brings Home a $750 Stuffed Raccoon as Norway’s World Cup Ends

Erling Haaland is leaving the World Cup without a trophy, but he is not going home empty-handed. The Manchester City striker stepped off Norway’s squad plane in Oslo holding a taxidermied raccoon clutching a whisky bottle — a $750 purchase from a well-known Western store in Texas. “It followed me,” he joked, capping a US campaign Norway had hoped would run far deeper. As the Scandinavians fly home with the most absurd keepsake of the tournament, Thomas Tuchel’s England move on through a bracket that has just lost one of the most feared centre-forwards on the planet.

The $750 Raccoon: How the Souvenir Happened

Haaland’s souvenir is a taxidermied raccoon holding a whisky bottle, bought for roughly $750 from a famous Western store in Texas, where Norway had part of their World Cup base camp. He showed the item off as the squad plane touched down in Oslo on 14 July 2026, telling cameras with a grin that the animal had “followed me” home.

The clip travelled around the world within hours. What makes it land so hard is the contrast: Haaland is famous for an almost clinical routine of sleep tracking, controlled nutrition and relentless gym work. Seeing that same athlete carry a stuffed animal down the aircraft steps punctures the machine-like image completely.

The 2026 World Cup is being staged across the United States, Canada and Mexico, and squads have spent weeks steeped in local culture — Texan base camps, air-conditioned stadiums, cowboy iconography. The tournament was always going to produce its own oddities. This is comfortably the strangest.

Norway Eliminated: The Haaland Generation Falls Short

Norway are out of the World Cup 2026, going home without converting the huge expectation placed on their golden generation. It was Haaland’s first World Cup — Norway had not reached a finals since 1998, and the striker carried much of the qualifying campaign himself.

Alongside him, Martin Ødegaard in midfield and Alexander Sørloth up front gave Norway an attacking spine capable of hurting anyone. What they lacked was tournament know-how, the thing no amount of Premier League goalscoring can manufacture.

It is a brutal paradox. Haaland is among the most efficient finishers in modern football, yet he leaves a World Cup without writing his name into its history. The next chance is 2030, when he will be around 30 — theoretically the peak years for a No. 9.

What Norway’s Exit Means for England

Norway’s elimination removes one of the most dangerous knockout opponents England could have drawn. Tuchel’s side, drawn in Group L, would have faced a striker whose entire game is built on attacking the space behind a high defensive line — precisely the risk England run when they push their full-backs forward and squeeze the pitch.

With Haaland gone, England’s route through the bracket gets marginally kinder. Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham and the rest now navigate a draw stripped of the one centre-forward capable of turning a single long pass into a goal against almost any defence in the tournament.

The warning still stands, though. A team many tipped as serious dark horses has fallen early, which is exactly what a 48-team World Cup does to assumptions. Norway found that out the hard way. England cannot afford to learn the same lesson.

Haaland: The Machine Who Still Surprises Off the Pitch

The raccoon is not a one-off. Haaland has long cultivated a double image: obsessive on the pitch, genuinely odd away from it. Meditation, a tightly policed diet, lotus-position goal celebrations — and now a $750 stuffed animal in the hold of a national team plane.

That is precisely why he cuts through. In a sport where nearly every player message is sanded down by a communications team, an unfiltered piece of absurdity builds an instant bond with supporters. Norwegian fans, for their part, read it as a way of laughing off a painful exit.

For Manchester City, one question lingers: what mental state does Haaland report back in for pre-season? A World Cup disappointment can fuel a striker or flatten him. The raccoon, at least, already has a permanent address in Oslo.

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