Why the USWNT gets half of the men’s World Cup prize money
Sam Cardona-Norberg breaks down the reason why the US women’s soccer team is getting half of the men’s World Cup prize money, and how it will go both ways.
Sports Seriously
Erling Haaland has spent the last month becoming the breakout star of the World Cup. Fans have become enchanted with his style on and off the field this summer. Isabel Haugseng Johansen has been his fan sine he was just a kid from Bryne.
Johansen is Haaland’s longtime girlfriend, and their story is a hometown one. They both grew up in Bryne, a small town in southwestern Norway, and both came through Bryne FK, the local club where Haaland made his professional debut at 15. Johansen played in the club’s women’s program, and Haaland has said she understands the demands of professional soccer better than most because of that experience. She was a player in her own right, debuting for Bryne’s senior women’s team at 13 and scoring 23 goals in 36 appearances.
She is also the one who started it. Haaland told Norwegian broadcaster NRK in 2025 that Johansen messaged him first, joking that she was the one who checked him out. They’d known each other since childhood through the club, but the friendship didn’t turn romantic until around 2021, during Haaland’s Borussia Dortmund years. When he moved to Manchester City in 2022, she moved to England with him.
The couple welcomed their first child, a son, in December 2024. Johansen rarely gives interviews and keeps her social media presence limited, unusual for the partner of a player of Haaland’s level, though she has been in the United States during the tournament and has posted her support around Norway’s matches.
Away from soccer, their life sounds less like a global superstar’s than you’d think. Haaland has said he cooks dinner, the two play Minecraft together, and trips home to Bryne usually involve ordering kebabs, which he has joked he’d serve at a wedding someday.
Haaland, 25, has carried Norway through its first World Cup since 1998, scoring his first career World Cup goal against Iraq on June 16 and powering the country’s deepest run in generations. On Saturday, he leads Norway into a quarterfinal against England with a semifinal spot on the line.
And, if Norway gets there, the timing would be perfect. The semifinal falls on July 15, Johansen’s 22nd birthday.
