It’s over, Åge
When your girlfriend (or boyfriend) dumps you, the first instinct will always be to try to win her back. It doesn’t matter if you know it’s not working out, you don’t want to be dumped, so you’ll say anything and do anything to win her back. Then maybe you can end it on your terms.
Åge Hareide knows he’s about to get dumped and he’s clinging on to any last hope of retaining his employment status as Head Coach of the Norwegian national team.
Åge, I’ve defended you. I’ve argued that we need to stay together because being in a relationship is better than being single. I’ve wanted to wait until we find someone better to replace you with.
However, enough is enough. As other commentators are saying today, the last two games are not the reason. We played ok in Glasgow and we played ok against Holland yesterday. But we didn’t get the points and afterwards, we were making excuses. There have been too many excuses. In the grand scheme of things you’re either lucky, and things bounce your way, or you’re not. If you’re not lucky significantly more than lucky, it’s because you’re inadequatly prepared. Åge’s teams have not been well prepared, they have resorted to excuses on too many occasions and now our relationship is finished. No more excuses.
What’s next? I don’t know. I would love to get a Karel Brückner type of coach, who has proven his worth at different levels, but I don’t see that happening. Maybe Solskjær can do his best Slaven Bilic/Mark Hughes impersonation and start off his management career as a national team coach, but I’m not convinced that’s a great solution either. I don’t see any great candidates among the Tippeliga coaches either, perhaps with the exception of Jan Jönsson, the Stabæk coach.
I hope we can find someone with a clearly defined strategy and a great ability to motivate. Semb was a decent strategist, but he was never a motivator. I saw far too many uninspired performances during his tenure. Hareide is a decent motivator, but a below average strategist and a lazy talent evaluator. We need someone who can inspire the players to perform at their best level, in a system that exploits the limited talent we have available. This was the key to success during the 90s and it will be the key to success again. We may not need the same system, but we need an innovative approach to the game to camouflage our talent disadvantage.
Thanks for your effort, Åge, I’m sure you did your best. However, we’ve decided to move on. It’s not you, it’s us. We don’t love you anymore.
Tags: Åge Hareide, Jan Jönsson, Mark Hughes, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Slaven Bilic
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16. October, 2008 at 13:20
You missed out Jurgen Klinsmann.
I don’t mind who you have as boss as long as you go through a “transitional phase” until the end of the qualifying group!
16. October, 2008 at 14:37
No, it’s you, Åge, not us!!
16. October, 2008 at 14:56
The position we’ve in is nothing else than sad. Our manager started this campaign with limited motivation. He promised to leave when we didn’t qualify for last summers Euros but the lack of preparation from our football leaders left us with no option than continue with the proven crap management.
Many, including myself, asked for younger and more motivated players in the squad and the improvement the last two games proved that we were right. The irony is that our current manager unwillingly made the swap of players. It is down to injury on his beloved underachievers that the inspiration from fresh blood, the same players he stated as not good enough, handed us a better team.
Hence it is easy to state that Hareide worked against the progress He now claims to be the reason for a prosperous future. All I can say is that Hareide is a complete WANKER
16. October, 2008 at 15:00
I see now that my first sentence doesn’t make much sense. Got interrupted when typing…
I was about to say: The position we’ve put ourselves in is nothing else than sad. Hope you understood anyways
16. October, 2008 at 15:57
Modified last sentence:
It’s not you, it’s us. We think you’re shit!
17. October, 2008 at 11:18
McClaren had the same problem – over-reliance on historically underachieving players. The excuse he had for picking these same players was that he had no better players available.
It seems to me that teams who overachieve do so, because they employ a number of excellent players, supported by players who lack some of their ability but make up for it with passion and workrate.
Can anyone name any World Cup winning teams with 11 world class players? Of course not, every team needs one or more unsung, underrated workhorses: think Dunga, Owen Hargreaves, Javier Mascherano, Claude Makelele. Every team needs players with passion: Stuart Pearce.
Give me players who would be honoured to play for the national team and who sing the national anthem at the line-up with pride rather than players who are technically better but view playing for the national side as just another game.
Are their decent, passionate, young, hard-working Norwegian youngsters around? Throw a couple of them in and see how they do. What do you have to lose?
21. October, 2008 at 13:08
I would argue that McLaren had the same problem: He was a shit manager, too!