Norway’s best sports politician coaches the national team – VG

This is a comment. The comment expresses the attitude of the writer.

It’s almost impossible to make a stronger impression than Solbakken has made in public in recent days.

Personally, I do not agree with him regarding the instruments in the Qatar debate and I see good arguments for sending a stronger signal than the national team coach does. However, there are many reasons to pay tribute to Solbakken for the way he defends his opinion on the matter.

Solbakken is employed to try and lead Norway to the world championships in the Gulf state and thus has a demanding starting point in a complex exchange of words. But regardless of how Norwegian football is thought to choose to deal with the Qatar crisis, there is respect for the way Ståle Solbakken answers tough questions.

On Friday morning, he presented his first team, and for almost an hour he was asked about various topics, in a way that he made an excellent tour.

Here, there is not a shred of the polite ostrich phrases we hear all too often in sports.

Instead, we have a national team manager who in a thoughtful, thoughtful and well-formulated way tackles everything from the selection of captains to corruption issues related to the World Cup.

It is brave and deserving that he does not wrap messages in cotton, and that he dares to give the Nordic cooperation a well-deserved slap in the face for being too lax.

Your criticism in the Swedish and Danish direction it is correct. But if there is something to react to, it must be that Solbakken seems more than fair to its own employer.

It is not entirely easy to see that the Norwegian Football Association has been significantly ahead of the Qatar crisis. If the issue is communication, then football president Terje Svendsen shouldn’t escape the actual referees either.

For the new director of the national team, of course, there are uncertain times from the beginning, as it is unpredictable what framework his work will entail in the future.

In the short term, he does not know which players from the great squad he will be able to use in the different games this spring. Entry and quarantine problems are a complicated puzzle in a red Europe, where the pieces are constantly taking on a new shape and color. National team players who play in Germany on a daily basis are among those who may be turned away from playing the opening match against Gibraltar.

Also, of course, the general choice that Norwegian football will make, if a World Cup in a “slave state” that was chosen in a murky way is something we want to be a part of, it will have a huge impact on your life ahead. .

But Solbakken also approaches this subject calmly and thoughtfully, in a way that it is impossible not to be impressed. And there will be more championships than the outrageous event that takes place next year.

History has shown that there are different sides of the man who will now lead Norway, and communication in adversity has not always had the highest style marks. But the way he behaves early on in his new job, the dice roll is 6 at all levels. Then time will tell if what he does in sports is on the same level as the topic of conversation.

At the moment, someone who works as a coach seems to be the main “sports politician” we have, at least in football.

The latter actually says a lot, both about Solbakken and NFF.