“Alarm, he is a traitor in the selection”

ABOUT FOOTBALL: How should the nation’s best soccer players work together when they have a traitor or two in their own ranks? These are the most important questions in Norwegian football right now.

ULLEVAAL: Outwardly, it looked harmonious as the national team players strolled the green grass of Ullevaal on Monday afternoon, ready for a 10-day meeting containing three games.

First a minor training match at home against Israel on Wednesday. Then two more important matches that decide the fate of the Norwegian League of Nations against Romania and Austria.

We saw smiles and laughter as a dozen Norwegian players during a quiet training session took the weekend’s matches with club teams out of the system.

But we did not see the most important:

Facial expressions in the locker room before and after training.

Difficult to repair

Because there has been a storm surrounding the Norwegian men’s soccer team after VG a couple of weeks ago revealed the word of mouth match between striker Alexander Sørloth and national team coach Lars Lagerbäck.

Crashing into a soccer closet is nothing new. the should slam, testifies to ambition and competitive spirit.

The relationship between the national team coach and the player can probably be repaired.

But for one or more members of the inner circle of the national team to leak what was said in an internal meeting to reporters should be seen as an abuse of a locker room culture that has been building over decades.

It’s about trust. Leaking from a closet is a mortal sin, especially in team sports where you depend on the woman or man who sits next to you in the closet.

They can’t trust each other

What is said in the closet should never be based on that closet.

What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.

What now risks the environment of the national team is a changing room where the players sit down and educate each other.

“Can I really trust him?”

“Maybe it was one of the two in the corner that both of them fight with little playing time?”

“He has contact with that and that journalist, is he the one who leaked?”

Or could it be an agent? One in the support system? Maybe he’s a player with his own agenda, someone who will create enough buzz around Lagerbäck in the hope that Ståle Solbakken will come in as coach of the national team.

It can take a long time to repair

We do not know. “He” or “someone” can be anyone. We are all sitting here like question marks.

But what we do know is that it is something very serious for an acting group. It’s about safety. How should the players of the Norwegian national team dare to express their opinion internally when they know that what is said may end in public view?

How should NN play MM well on the field when everyone knows there is a traitor in their own ranks, and that it can be anyone on the team?

There is reason to believe that repairing the damage will take a long time.

1: The person or persons who have leaked can stand up and apologize to the entire team. But it does not happen, then the person is “made” in the environment for a long time.

2: VG will never commit the mortal sin of revealing the source of the leak.

In the soccer community, now there is talk of who has leaked. There is speculation both with names and with intermediaries who have reported more.

Some names are repeated more often than others. Some also claim to know exactly what has happened.

This is likely to be the case in the future, both in the national team dressing room and abroad.

The 1998 World Cup drama

He has raided the national team many times in the past.

We won’t forget Erik Mykland and Henning Berg’s trip to La Baule town during the 1998 World Cup.

The nightclub visit made the front pages of the newspaper fairly quickly.

But it took a long time before we knew about the drama behind the scenes.

There were very strong reactions internally to Myggen and Berg having a few beers a couple of days after the opening match against Morocco.

The group of players was divided. Meetings were called. Several demanded that the Mosquito and Berg be sent home.

But the information from the meetings was never leaked. Every word was kept internal. A loyal group of players took it for granted that this was the case. And they also accepted the decision that the two players be allowed to remain in the World Cup.

If news of the players’ uprising had made the headlines, the entire World Cup would probably have been ruined for Norway.

-We would never have beaten Brazil if someone leaked that more players would send Mosquitos and Berg home, says one of the players 22 years later.

It was about trust in 1998. It was about broken trust in 2020.

The question is how long it will take to rebuild trust.

The costumes of the national team will not be the same until it has happened.