Max Bretos on Chances Erling Haaland & Norway Upset Brazil in the World Cup

Max Bretos has a simple instruction for anyone still on the fence about Erling Haaland. Find him on the screen and watch nothing else for three minutes. "You'll be blown away," the soccer analyst said. That, more than any stat line, explains why casual fans are falling for this World Cup.

Bretos joined guest host Seth Rollins to talk through a tournament that has delivered exactly what the sport needed: the biggest stars playing their biggest games. Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi are scoring in bunches. Haaland is announcing himself to a new audience. Even Cristiano Ronaldo, near the end of his run, got in on the act. Bretos believes that has been a huge factor in drawing in newcomers, because the names people half-recognize are the ones lighting up the box scores.

Haaland got the deepest scouting report. Bretos called him a unicorn, a pure goal scorer who is also a superb athlete, the son of a famous footballer, and a difference maker who would win a World Cup on any of the top teams. That, Bretos said, is what gives Norway a puncher's chance. He does not think they have the depth to survive the round of 16, but they have Haaland, the envy of every player in the field, running at 25 miles an hour on those dead sprints and pairing elite athleticism with elite technical skill.

Could he take down Brazil by himself? Bretos was honest. He does not think so. Haaland can get close, can score a goal, and Bretos even wondered aloud whether Norway might be catching Brazil at the wrong time. But one player carrying a nation past a side that deep is a tall order.

The other reason for the surge, Bretos and Rollins agreed, is timing. This tournament is landing in American prime time. Bretos remembered the 2002 World Cup in Korea, when the United States advanced to the round of 16 in a game that kicked off at three in the morning and nobody saw. Now Ronaldo is on at 7 p.m. Eastern and Messi at 6, on a holiday weekend, with fans already sitting around at home. Bretos called it a perfect storm for growing the game in the States.

He did offer one word of caution for the goal-hungry. As the tournament reaches the quarterfinals, Bretos expects things to get more cagey, with teams playing it safer and the glut of goals drying up. He did not want to disappoint anyone, and he allowed he could be wrong, but the group-stage feast of stars picking apart overmatched opponents may give way to tighter, tenser knockout soccer.

None of that dampened the mood in the studio. Rollins, won over by the pitch, declared himself in. Bretos summed up his own approach to converting the skeptical. You cannot tell people to watch soccer, he said. You just show them how awesome it is and let the stars do the rest.