Pitch Perfect

Norway's Erling Haaland and England's Jude Bellingham face off this weekend in the quarterfinals — and fans online are imagining a Heated Rivalry-style backstory

Is Jude an omega? Will Haaland be able to resist his pheromones during Saturday’s highly anticipated World Cup quarterfinal between England and Norway? Why are there more than 43,000 fanfics listed under the “Men’s Football” tag on Archive of Our Own? Do these sentences mean nothing to you? 

The World Cup is always a collision of fandoms. Your favorite players from your favorite clubs divide themselves by nationality (patriotism is a fandom, right?) and clash on a global stage that produces the most legendary games and rivalries in sports. It’s also a televised barrage of emotional moments and dramatic tension, and the internet’s fanfiction girls have taken notice. 

Enter the primary pairing of the 2026 World Cup: English midfielder Jude Bellingham, currently with club team Real Madrid, and Norwegian striker Erling Haaland, currently at Manchester City. The two breakout stars of this tournament were once teammates at Dortmund (a German club in the Bundesliga league, for the newly minted fans) between 2020 and 2022. Their bromance in those years was well documented, and shot back into the spotlight this week after Bellingham led England through a grueling, instant classic of a match against Mexico to clinch a spot in the round of eight teams and a faceoff against Norway, and Haaland. 

The match, which kicks off at 5 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, is a parasocial goldmine. Haaland — blond and hulking — plays like a true Viking raiding the shores of Yorkshire. He’s also funny as hell, infamous for his quippy, self-deprecating social media presence, collection of patterned luxury silk pajamas, and generally goofy demeanor. Haaland’s popularity and name recognition have exploded during this year’s tournament, as he traveled around the United States, donning western getup in Dallas and charming fans via a fascination with American culture. 

Bellingham, meanwhile, is a walking thirst trap. He has face that seems once in a generation until you learn he has a near-identical younger brother, and the raw talent and skills to back up his rising superstardom. He’s much more guarded and cautious about his public image than the post-happy Haaland — except perhaps when they’re together. They’re the faces of the next generation of World Cup greats, and their stars were always bound to collide. 

Editor’s picks

To be clear, both men seem to be in relationships with women. Halland is dating former Norwegian soccer player Isabel Haugseng Johansen, and Bellingham has been linked to model Ashlyn Castro. Yet when the England versus Norway matchup became official, social media was immediately flooded with photos, videos, edits, and mashups of the two in their yellow and black bumble bee Dortmund uniforms. Video edits of Bellingham launching himself into the arms of 6’ 5” Haaland, breathing heavily while they lay on the grass after a goal celebration, dropping his forehead onto his chest, and dipping into a press gaggle to kiss him on the cheek have racked up million of views across social media, in practically every language you can imagine.

The Haaland/ Bellingham memes are a product of the long-term fascination with the cultural norms around masculinity, and the exceptions to those rules allowed within sports. In the hyper-online world of Heated Rivalry and Challengers, fantasizing about hot athletes being a little (or very) gay has never been more fun and communal. Fujoshis unite.

Football is the largest sport in the world, and a certain amount of crossover between followers of the sport and online stan communities — often female and queer dominated — is to be expected. Some more enthusiastic followers on the self-publishing platform, fanfiction host Archive of Our Own (AO3) began casting the pair into the omegaverse — plenty of explainers on that one — a popular subgenre of fanfiction, imagining enemies to lovers pairings or Heated Rivalry– style secret romances. 

Related Content

It’s not just Haaland and Bellingham. Fans are creating entire charts joking about the hypothetical relationships between the biggest stars of the World Cup, building on each other to create increasingly complicated dynamics based on little more than players online perceptions. In some fans’ imaginations, French forward Kylian Mbappé is in a “messy divorce” with Brazilian midfielder Neymar Jr. — the two were teammates at Paris Saint-Germain, and reportedly fell out amidst the athletic turmoil amongst the club’s attempt to build a star-studded superteam. “Fuck it i’m starting a rumor,” one user wrote above photos of Bellingham and French winger Michael Olise. 

Trending Stories

With the eyes of the world on the pitch, footie fanfiction has finally broken containment, spilling over from its usual platforms. From the beginning of the World Cup to Friday, more than 12,000 works have been published or updated under the “Men’s Football” fandom tag on AO3. Every pairing you could possibly imagine can be found if you scroll down far enough. 

Haaland addressed some of the online behavior surrounding him and other players during the world cup in a recent interview — unclear if he has read any of the fics — telling reporters that he thinks American fans are “kind of hilarious.”