Norway furious after Bellingham equaliser stands in England defeat

England beat Norway 2-1 at Miami Stadium, but the quarter-final ended in dispute after Jude Bellingham’s first-half stoppage-time equaliser survived a challenge over a spidercam wire. Norway’s first run to the World Cup quarter-finals was over, and their players believed the match turned on whether the ball had clipped the overhead cable before Bellingham scored.

The flashpoint came after Orjan Nyland’s goal kick appeared to pass close to the suspended camera wire above the pitch. The ball dropped to Elliot Anderson, who fed Anthony Gordon before Bellingham levelled the game at 1-1 before half-time. Norway argued that if the ball had touched the wire, the correct restart should have been a dropped ball and the goal should not have stood.

Several Norway players immediately surrounded referee Clement Turpin as the protest began, and head coach Stale Solbakken later raised the issue with the official at half-time. Solbakken said Turpin told him he had not seen the incident and had not received any message that it happened. FIFA later said there was “no evidence” the ball touched a wire, and added that the connected-ball sensor showed no peak in the tracking data that would indicate wire contact.

That left the technology and the on-field view pointing in different directions, without a clean answer for a decisive moment. The ball’s data could rule out a clear impact signal, but it could not by itself settle every disputed angle of the play, especially when the footage showed only how close the ball came to the cable and not a definitive touch.

Norway’s frustration only deepened in the second half when Torbjorn Heggem headed in what would have been another equaliser, only for VAR to disallow the goal after penalising Erling Haaland for a shove on Elliot Anderson at a corner. Sander Berge called the wire incident “ridiculous”, while captain Martin Odegaard said the margins were not in Norway’s favour and that he had questions about some refereeing decisions.

Former England striker Wayne Rooney said on BBC Sport that the ball seemed to deviate and come down quickly. For Norway, the match combined two separate officiating disputes, one involving the spidercam setup and another involving VAR, and both fed the sense that their historic run ended with decisions still hanging over the result.