Go Out Quietly? No Way, Norway

The differences between international and American football are not nearly as great as they sometimes might seem, as evidenced in the World Cup on Saturday when the Vikings were eliminated in the second round.

Au revoir, Norway, you were fun while you lasted. You led the tournament in upsets--somehow tying Morocco, somehow beating Brazil--and you led all 32 nations in must-attend news conferences, courtesy of your loose cannon of a coach, “Super” Egil Olsen.

Olsen was the one who rankled millions of Brazilians by predicting Scotland would knock off the reigning world champions in the World Cup opener--and then, just to keep the Scots guessing, derided Scotland as “the weakest team in the group.”

Olsen was the one who characterized the Brazilian defense “as organized as garbage,” who said the only thing stopping Brazil from repeating as World Cup titlist was not having him as its coach, who forecast a France-Norway final because Norway was the smartest team in the field--having been smart enough to hire Olsen, of course.

And then when his team fell three rounds short of the final with Saturday’s 1-0 loss to Italy, Olsen didn’t wish the winners well or offer congratulations to his Italian counterpart, Cesare Maldini.

No, Olsen went out the way he came in, describing the Italian team as “bad,” the Italian victory as “bad,” the Norwegian players as underachievers and himself, rather accurately, as “bitter.”

Then he said he was going home to take the rest of the year off.

“My plans are to take the next half year off in Norway. After Christmas, I don’t know, maybe then I’ll have the guts to go forward and coach another team,” he said.

For the rest of the World Cup, soccer writers will be wearing their credentials at half-mast, mourning Olsen’s untimely departure from their daily notebooks.

Olsen’s Norwegians played the least-subtle brand of soccer in the tournament, a direct, hurry-up-the-field style predicated on Olsen’s demands that no player ever pass the ball back or to the side--only forward, forward, always forward.

It is a system abhorred by purists, but maybe one the Americans might want to adopt, based on the twin presumption that:

a) “Go deep” is a strategical philosophy any American can appreciate.

b) Any new system has to be better than the one that got drop-kicked back to the States by Germany, Iran and Yugoslavia.

Foremost among Olsen’s great disappointments Saturday was that several times Norwegian players disobeyed his express commands. “We played too many square balls,” he groused. Too many--i.e., any number equaling or surpassing the number one.

A few things worth knowing about Olsen: He is an avowed Marxist, he is a terror at the poker table (where he claims to have made more money than from coaching soccer) and as a player, his nickname was “Drillo”--a reference to his hellbent, headfirst style of play and his habit of puncturing defensive walls with blistering free kicks.

He also failed to score in 16 appearances as midfielder for the Norwegian national team from 1964 to 1971.

All in all, this explains a lot about contemporary Norwegian soccer.

In the ironic twist of the tournament so far, Norway was eliminated by a very Norway-like long through ball, played forward by Luigi Di Biagio from deep in Italy’s half to Christian Vieri, who sprinted in a straight line to beat two Norwegian defenders to the ball and bang it past goalkeeper Frode Grodas.

Soccer doesn’t get any more direct than that.