Portugal beats Norway 2-1, led by Jesus, despite Ronaldo's absence from the starting lineup

Portugal returned from Norway with its second victory under the leadership of its new coach, Jorge Jesus, with a score of 2-1 despite the seat of its veteran captain, Cristiano Ronaldo, on the bench on Sunday in the second round of Group D competitions for the first level of the European Nations League.

Portugal and Norway entered the match on the back of their wins in the first round over Wales (1-0) and Denmark (3-2), which they faced on Sunday, and the former emerged victorious at home 2-0.

The victory was on Sunday for Jesus' men, who inflicted on Erling Haaland and his teammates their first defeat on their home soil since March 22, in a friendly match against the Czech Republic (1-2), leaving Norway without a victory over the "Seleção" of Europe since its only victory in 12 matches in September 2010 in the 2012 European Cup qualifiers.

Tonight's meeting was supposed to bring together two of the biggest stars in international football, namely Ronaldo and Haaland.

But the Saudi Al-Nasr star, who is playing his twenty-fourth year with Portugal (146 goals in 234 international matches), remained on the bench, while Haaland, who scored a brace in the opening win over Denmark 3-2, had the opportunity to increase his score, which before Sunday’s match had reached 64 goals in only 56 matches with his country.

The English Manchester City striker was on time to equalize for his country in the second half, after falling behind in the first to a goal by Joao Felix in a match during which Portugal was missing Bruno Fernandes due to injury.

The start was successful for Portugal, which opened the scoring in the 17th minute after a triple play started by Nuno Mendes, who passed the ball on the left side to Pedro Neto, who passed it towards Joao Felix, who shot it from the outskirts of the area from a tight spot into the right corner.

Norway tried to return to the match and had several chances to score, but without success, so the score remained the same until the end of the first half. Then Norway equalized in the second from a free kick executed by Martin Odegaard, which was blocked by goalkeeper Diogo Costa, and it reached Patrick Berg, who turned it towards Haaland, scoring his 65th (51st) goal.

But goalkeeper Orian Nyland gave Portugal the lead again when he passed the ball by mistake to Gonzalo Ramos, and the latter shot it falling from outside the penalty area into the net (54), which almost shook again seconds later, but the crossbar interfered in the face of substitute Rafael Leao, and then Gonzalo Ramos knocked the ball out of the net on the follow-up (57).

As a result of a second fatal mistake by goalkeeper Nyland, who came out to intercept the ball, Ramos added his second personal goal and his country's third goal, but VAR intervened and canceled the goal due to the Italian Milan striker being offside (58).

But Norway did not take advantage of the cancellation of this goal to save at least a point and ended up falling on its own soil.

Spain won the FIFA Women's Under-20 World Cup, after defeating North Korea 4-3 on penalty kicks, after a goalless draw in the final of the tournament that concluded Sunday in Poland.

The Spanish national team won the title for the second time in its history, after previously winning the title in 2022, and it succeeded in stripping the North Korean national team of the title that it won in 2024.

The Spanish team is now in second place among the teams that have won the title the most with two wins, behind the American, German and North Korean teams with three wins each.

The two teams did not succeed in translating the opportunities afforded to each of them into goals throughout the 90 minutes, so two additional periods were resorted to, during which nothing new happened, and penalty kicks were resorted to, which smiled at Spain, which won 4-3.

On its way to winning the title for the second time in its history, Spain beat Nigeria 2-0, then beat New Caledonia 11-0 and beat China 1-3 in the group stage.

In the round of sixteen, Spain defeated Portugal 2-0, then faced Brazil in the quarter-finals but beat them 1-0, then beat Italy 2-0 in the semi-finals.