Norway coach Lars Lagerback said that he expects his players to approach their final Euro 2020 qualifier against Malta seriously, despite the fact that they have nothing to gain from tonight’s match.

With the top two places in Group F already secured by Spain and Sweden, Norway have little to play for today as they are already assured to take part in the next year’s Euro 2020 play-offs after they had managed to top their section in last year’s Nations League.

Norway, who are currently sharing third spot in the group with Romania, are looking to end a wait lasting almost 20 years to reach a first major championship finals as their last appearance in the marquee competition dates back to 2000 when they competed in the European Championships co-hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands.

Still, Lagerback, believes that today’s match will be a very useful warm-up for his team ahead of the play-off matches which will be held next year.

“We may have already assured ourselves of a place in the Euro 2020 play-offs but for us the match against Malta is still very important,” Lagerback told the Times of Malta yesterday.

“I am looking at this match as a perfect preparation for next year’s play-offs and I expect the players to adopt the same approach we did during all this qualifying campaign.

“Today in international football national coaches have so little time to prepare for matches that every training session and match you have with your player is always very important to be able to develop the team and help them always produce a good performance.”

In the first meeting between these two countries in Oslo in September, Norway found the going tough to break down the Maltese team and needed two goals from set-piece situation to battle to a 2-0 win.

Defending set-pieces has been one of Malta’s biggest frailties throughout this qualifying campaign and asked whether they would try to exploit such situations to get the three points, Lagerback said: “To be honest, I don’t have much of a preference and I’ll be happy if we had to score from set-pieces or from open play as long as we get the three points.

“In today’s football set piece situations are getting more and more important especially in matches where both teams are playing at the same level.

“In Oslo we found it very difficult to break Malta down as they were very well organized defensively and we manage to grab the goals through set pieces so for sure we’ll try and make the most of such situations.”

Lagerback confirmed that RB Salzburg striker Erling Braut Haaland will not be part of the team for tonight’s match as they young forward was forced to pull out injured and returned to his club in Austria.

Major boost

The Norway coach said that reaching the Euro 2020 finals will be a major boost for the country’s football movement and made it clear that they will give everything they have to reach such an objective.

“It’s a big boost for every country to make it to a major championships and for Norway it’s not an exception,” the former Iceland coach said.

“It has been quite some time since Norway managed to

qualify for a World Cup or a European Championship and if we do that it will a huge shot in the arm for Norwegian football and I can assure our fans that

we will be doing everything in our power to achieve this objective.”