Pick your favourite from the assortment of Ørjan Nyland’s saves from Norway’s 2-1 win over Brazil. The penalty, naturally. Brazil had not missed a World Cup penalty in regulation time since 1986. Or the dangling leg that denied Vinicius Junior a fifth goal. Perhaps, the acrobatic dive that spared Kristoffer Ajer the indignity of scoring the World Cup’s most bizarre own goal. There was also a block to deny Rayan.
Four saves, each more spectacular than the last. Yet, none captured Nyland quite like the one that never counted.
Casemiro floated a cross to Rayan in the 63rd minute, who cushioned it into Bruno Guimaraes’ path. The result seemed like a foregone conclusion. Out came Nyland, and, defying both age and anatomy, made himself even bigger than his 6’4″ frame. Arms and legs splayed horizontally, he became a star — not merely metaphorically, but quite literally.
The offside flag was raised. The save became irrelevant. But try telling that to Nyland, who celebrated it with more gusto than he did the penalty. For a fleeting second, he was not at the New Jersey Stadium anymore. He had teleported to the bedroom in Volda, where a poster of Peter Schmeichel hung on the wall. In 1999, Schmeichel had produced an almost identical ‘star jump’ save to deny Ivan Zamorano in the Champions League quarter-final against Inter Milan. Nyland wanted to replicate it ever since. This was his day.
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Schmeichel appealed for other reasons, too. Like Nyland, he had been a handball player. The star jump save was a novelty in football, granted, but the technique was borrowed from handball. And that despite coming from a ‘small’ country, he became one of the world’s best.
More than anything, though, he refused to let goalkeepers be invisible.
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Football is a hierarchical sport. For all the theories of it being built on the postulates of equality, the sport cannot be more classist. At the very bottom of its power hierarchy lie the goalkeepers. Databases will immortalise Erling Haaland’s brace against Brazil. The striker would be frozen in time, and etched in history. Nyland’s saves will require memory.
Norway goalkeeper Oerjan Nyland (1) saves a shot by Brazil’s Bruno Guimaraes. (AP)
Yet, with their brand of goalkeeping — one that is not obsequious, but conspicuous — Nyland and Schmeichel command attention. Walking up to an already distraught Brazilian icon, whose tear barrier could have broken any second, and then greeting him with animated taunts ahead of a last-minute penalty that was purely ornamental and inconsequential served no tactical purpose. It served a theatrical one. Nyland wanted to be the protagonist.
He always has.
In swimming classes as a kid, Nyland would jump off diving boards too high for his size. “Relax, I’ve got this,” he would tell his horrified parents, whose hearts were skipping a beat too many. He would knock training wheels off his bicycle, not because he had mastered the art, but because his friend did not use them. At 12, he would break bones skiing in the Sunnmørstafetten relay. When the cast came off, his first words were: “I’m going straight to the hills.”
He excelled in every sport he tried. Nyland was in the national skiing team at 13, a star in the making under the sticks for Hødd, a golfer rapidly on the rise, and an indispensable member of his handball team.
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Once, when football and handball fixtures clashed, the clubs argued over who would get him. Nyland came up with a solution — he played the handball game in Trondheim, took a flight to Sunnmøre, and then played football.
The protagonist’s arc, however, soon stalled.
Manchester United and Arsenal would show interest after the 2013 U-21 Euros, where Norway reached the semi-finals, but never lodged a bid. Everton would, but it was too low. He joined Ingolstadt in Germany, where his chance as first-choice goalkeeper finally arrived just as the club were relegated.
It seemed that things had finally fallen into place when he joined Dean Smith’s Aston Villa. Though in the Championship, Nyland was playing in England, and playing regularly. Until, an ACL injury sidelined him for 183 days. After years of doing his best journeyman impression, Nyland thought he had finally found a place to call home in Sevilla, before he lost the No 1 shirt there too.
In 15 professional seasons, Nyland has played only 396 club matches. Seven of those seasons were spent as an understudy. In the shadows.
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Nyland is not in the shadows anymore. He might be unemployed after the World Cup, having not found a club yet, but at East Rutherford, he forced eyeballs on him. “Standing here today and getting paid for all the crap you’ve been in, it’s really nice,” he told reporters after the match.
Nyland’s former goalkeeping coach at Hødd, Ronny Osnes was once asked to name the traits that made his pupil special.
Mentality. Willpower. Athleticism. Technique. The expected answers followed.
“Anything else?”
‘Aura,’ said Osnes.
Against Brazil, Nyland was exactly that. Aura.
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