Chance of Chance – NRK Sport – Sports News, Results and Broadcast Schedule

We shouldn’t pretend it was a surprise. The decision to start full contact football training for the first time has been postponed so many times that the original season is already underway. That is why the Norwegian Football Association has done it just to put the obvious into words.

The recent slightly desperate hopes for sports jerseys had an expiration date. It was at 4:57 PM yesterday, Thursday, when Sports Minister Abid Raja opened the government press conference at Akershus Fortress. The topic was soccer, and there were long hopes for signs of an opening for broad soccer in the foreseeable future.

These did not arrive.

The doctrine at the moment is to avoid more closings, but definitely not to open, whether it is cultural events or football for those who are not part of the youth or the elite.

However, the message was good news, but only for a team that hoped to have the advantage of playing at home in the semifinals of a playoff that could eventually lead to a Eurocup playoff.

Tens of thousands waiting

The breadth was not mentioned in a single word in the press conference itself. On the back, Sports Minister Raja told NRK that the width was probably next on the list. The problem is, that list won’t be updated until we talk about October at the earliest.

Neither the following nor the following months are suitable months for league games in American football.

The infection situation in Norway’s large cities is also so out of control that half of the infection cases cannot be traced back to their source. And then everyone becomes a possible suspect, including sports.

After the NFF leadership spent the night before thinking and arguing, they arrived this morning with the discouraging, and therefore obvious, message for the tens of thousands who have spent more than six months waiting to play football the way habitual.

We write tens of thousands, because we still think there are many. Preliminary figures in long-standing youth and youth soccer are extremely disappointing reading. The 20,000 that are mentioned in the headline are the empty seats of the closet of the country’s clubs.

The obvious when we wrote on September 18 still hasn’t been for a long time. As recently as the end of July, the signs were positive. Infection rates throughout the summer had remained so reasonably low that reopening was approaching. Approaching wide soccer spot in queue.

September 1 was increasingly referred to as a current date. This would also allow the implementation of a somewhat amputated series.

Frustration and abandonment

At the government press conference on August 7, a new frustration was expected. Health Minister Høie postponed both the opening of grassroots sports and expanding the number of people who could participate in the events.

The beaches, the parties and the summer life in general had stopped the reopening indefinitely. And the cultural and sports sector entered a collective desperation, where they suddenly stood with queues without numbers. The following Monday, several of the most important special unions together with NIF had a central meeting with the Minister of Health and the Minister of Culture Raja.

The sport was given a day to present a list of priorities for its reopening. An initially desperate task was solved in record time and ended up on a priority list for each sport within several different phases of reopening.

For soccer, there were only two. There was no time for more until the season ended. The first phase included street soccer, 2nd women’s division and 3rd men’s division. This affected 9000 assets. The last phase was the rest of broad football, which includes 42,000 athletes. Or covered. Because the obvious question now is how many of the 51,000 who ever return to active football.

No one necessarily knows the answer. But many fear him. That’s right.

It is not just a number of active people who are disappearing, there are also participants in club activities, in volunteer work and as leaders, who are no longer seen in sports stadiums.

Loss of opportunity

And indeed, it is possible and decent to think that the Government, regardless of responsibility and the principles of equal treatment, has given too low a priority to grassroots sport in recent months. Where they could have opted for full contact training in the first instance, at a time this summer where the infection situation indicated it, they waited. The government had its list and kept it. Principles in politics remain valuable until someone comes up with something better. No more.

So here you could have taken the opportunity to open up to full contact training while you had it.

Training involves far less the dreaded relocation of people out of the local environment than combat activity and would provide a basis for a fairer analysis of what greater openness might have involved. The experience of Denmark, which opened broad football as early as mid-May, also indicates that it has not led to a notable increase in infection rates.

That consideration for children, young people and the workplace should and should be addressed and prioritized, of course. But there were moments in which a parallel process was defended for grassroots sport. Simply because it affects so many and for so long.

More than 20,000 members of a separate Facebook group to open open football were not, and of course should not be, enough to make politicians change their minds. But it said something about the strength of commitment.

The importance of wide soccer

Broadway football isn’t just a place that has obvious health importance. We will see the public health aspect of abandonment that is now necessarily coming in a fairly short time. The likelihood that the amount of exercise and activity will be fully compensated for by other physical exercise is minimal at best.

One thing is for sure: this will affect a lot of people.

In addition, there is a social aspect to this that has been highlighted in the discussions surrounding the opening of children’s sports in early summer, which unfortunately also applies to grassroots football. The function of sports fields as a social setting is perhaps its most important function at this level. Or the levels. The gap between, when it comes to soccer, the hard-working 3rd division clubs and the 7 teams in the oldboys series across the country is enormous. But you need many of the same.

Now none of them will be fulfilled in the short term. And an exhausting winter awaits us, purely football.

The death of one, the bread of the other

For the other contact sports, today’s message may be positive news, albeit well wrapped. The fact that the 51,000 footballers are no longer part of the solidity discussion shortens the road to reopening. For everyone else.

Also, it is quite obvious that politicians want to send optimistic signals to the sport as soon as possible.

Health Minister Høie suggested this recently. But he has not yet been able to follow up, as the infection situation in Norway, and especially in large cities, develops.

20,000 empty seats

The titleholder, who plays in the already-lost children’s and youth soccer, is borrowed from the rap trio Klovner at the Lyn Cup final tribute match in 2004. The song takes a self-ironic take on the then ridiculous viewer numbers of club from Oslo, who later played in The Elite Series.

Little did they know that they described what was normal 16 years later.

The last verse says the following:
20,000 empty seats cheer for Lyn every Sunday,
but today there will be hustle and bustle and too many people.
Because 20,000 empty seats are filled by nerds
But we took them down and sent them home
And on Monday everything is as before.

To the last line, only this Friday should we add a Unfortunately, thus in the name of wide football: Monday andr that is, unfortunately, everything as before.