That remained the case after the interval, when China came close twice to score in the first ten minutes of the second half.

Despite playing without key player Li Ying, who was shown two yellow cards in the last game, China had numerous attempts on target until Norway gradually took the upper hand.

Maren Mjelde made it 2-0 in the 88th minute after latching on to a rebound from Lu to seal the game for Norway, a goal Eyjolfsson said he "can take the blame for."

"The second goal came because I pushed in the end a lot of players forward, which is risky to do," he said, "it doesn't matter if you lose one-nil or two-nil, we try to get a goal in the end, didn't work but we created some opportunities to score in the end."

The Chinese team were visibly more spirited and enthusiastic than their last game with Portugal, and kept pounding on the Norwegians, something its head coach appreciated.

"The performance of our team was good today, I was happy with the players. We created a lot of very good chances. We were unlucky not to get anything out of the game," Eyjolfsson said.

"It's important for us to get the performance so short before the Asian Cup. It's encouraging for our team. Of course you will always want as a coach both the results and performance, but today we got the performance not the results," he said.

In the other match of Group A, world No.4 Australia was held 0-0 by a stubborn Portugal, which ranks No. 38 worldwide.

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