NOT GOING TO THE European Championships: On Saturday evening it became clear that the football European Championships 2024 will go ahead without Norway. The match against Scotland is irrelevant anyway. Photo: Bjørn S. Delebekk / VG
Scotland v Norway: This COULD and should have been the most important international match of the year. And the fact is that, paradoxically, it would have been played WITHOUT Norway’s four best offensive players. What if…
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If you were to set up an ideal Norway XI on the men’s side, the four “top”, then you would quickly place Alexander Sørloth and Antonio Nusa on the edges, and Martin Ødegaard in a free role behind Erling Braut Haaland.
Now none of them are available for what could and should have been the most important international football match in a few years. All have reported injury absences, and it is not because the match still does not mean a do or don’t for a European Championship place in the summer of 2024.
It gives some thought.
What would the media coverage be like these days – a Norwegian opportunity for the first play-offs since 2000, but without our best men available?
The tone would have been much tougher, more fervent, that’s for sure.
“How is Ødegaard’s concussion, is there a possibility against Scotland? Or?”
“Haaland finished the game after all. Can he really not play – the match is so important for Norway?”
“Can the back to Nusa handle 45 minutes, maybe more?”
Now, naturally, there is a more indifferent tone, although of course everyone would have played their best against Scotland, regardless. But with the possibility of a play-off on the boat on Saturday night, a victory over Scotland in the final qualifying game would be the last hope anyway.
Would the national team management work harder to get any of Ødegaard, Nusa, Sørloth or Braut Haaland in the game against Scotland – if the match had meant EC or not EC?
I think the answer to that question is self-evident – a clear “yes”. A European Championship place would mean enormously for the entire product “Norwegian football”.
80 games and 33 goals have the four-leaf clover Sørloth, Ødegaard, Haaland and Nusa for Norway since Ståle Solbakken became national team manager in 2021, it is a four-leaf clover many nations envy us.
And then it goes without saying that it is important for a national team manager (Ståle Solbakken) to bring in the best, if they can only play 25 minutes.
A national team manager in football has many important jobs – one of the most important is choosing the right players for matches. Now Ståle Solbakken is faced with a somewhat strange situation: He is missing four stars, in a match that does not mean the world.
Are you then using the match to experiment? He has to – no matter what he had in mind beforehand, with all the damage due. Jørgen Strand Larsen takes the forward position, in which he has shown good pace in the past. Oscar Bobb has shown so much now that he aspires to a place, regardless of who is available.
Bobb can play both behind Strand Larsen or on one of the edges. Perhaps Solbakken will change his system, because he is missing these four players?
In all cases like this, when important players are missing, a football coach/manager will always respond that this is the chance for other players to show themselves. Well then, it goes without saying, but the best are missing – anyway.
I would use the match to try out a different system, a system that might suit this national team group better (3–4–3), since many changes still have to be made from the original starting point, with Ødegaard, Nusa, Sørloth and Braut Haaland ready to start :
Selvik – Ajer, Berge, Østigård – Ryerson, Berg, Aursnes, Bjørkan – Bobb, Strand Larsen, Elyounoussi.
The match means something – perhaps especially for Ståle Solbakken, who wants to see a group of players who can prove that they want the national team manager to continue with what he has started in the last two years, and perhaps succeed – in the end?
A victory in the last international match of the season always gives a form of optimism with regard to the continuation.
Kick-off in Scotland: 20:45.
COMMENTS: VG’s Knut Espen Svegaarden. Photo: BJØRN S. DELEBEKK / VGPublisert:
Published: 19.11.23 at 15:34
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2023-11-19 14:34:55
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