FRANCE 98 – General Media News Template

Norwegian coach Egil Olsen hopes his team will be able to unveil some effective new set-piece moves to sink Morocco when they play their opening World Cup Group A match in Montpellier on Wednesday night.

Olsen conducted a two-hour training session behind closed doors on Monday that was devoted entirely to working on free-kicks and other dead ball situations.

“We have played a lot of matches and revealed a lot of our set pieces, so we wanted to put some effort into modifying them and also work on some new ones,” said Olsen.

“We wanted to be able to do that without anyone watching us.” Olsen was annoyed that a Norwegian tabloid nespaper used a helicopter to take aerial photos of the session, but otherwise pronounced himself completely satisfied with his team’s build-up to the tournament. “We are feeling very positive,” he said. “We have nothing to complain about, no injuries and no problems. That is unusual, but nice. You normally expect to have two or three injuries to worry about.” The Norwegians will travel to Montpellier on Tuesday morning and Olsen expects to name his starting line-up to face the Moroccans on Tuesday evening.

“In my mind the team is all but selected,” Olsen said. “There may be one question mark, but nine or 10 of the players are decided. It’s always difficult when you have a lot of good players to choose from.” The Norwegians expect defending champions Brazil to finish on top of Group A and see their opening two matches against Morocco and Scotland as the ones they must win if they are to progress past the first round for the first time in three World Cup appearances. Norway have won nine and drawn five of their last 14 matches after qualifying unbeaten. The 17-month undefeated run includes a 4-2 triumph over Brazil last year and warm-up victories this year over fellow qualifiers Saudi Arabia (6-0), Denmark (2-0) and Mexico (5-2). “I’m not worried about our unbeaten run or the psychology of it,” said Olsen. “The fact is we had some luck in some of our matches and we are certainly not as good as our results would seem to indicate. The results have been better than our performances. We know that we are not the best team in the world. We are very realistic.” Olsen believes Norway’s chances of beating Brazil again are very slim-particularly at the World Cup.

He said: “I think we have a chance to beat them; we are certainly not beaten in advance. Maybe our chance is 20 percent. Not bad.” The Norwegians have twice previously qualified for the finals-in 1934 and 1994 — and failed to progress on both occasions. Experienced Liverpool defender Stig Inge Bjornebye believes the team’s fortunes may be about to change.

Bjornebye is confident the work Olsen has put in as coach over the past eight years is about to bear fruit.

“If we play to our best here then we have the ability to go quite far,” he said.

“In the nine years I’ve been playing for the national team, I’ve seen a lot of changes. Olsen has got rid of a lot of the bad habits we used to have and completely changed our attitides.” 

But Bjornebye points out that Morocco, Scotland and Brazil are all teams that have the capability of advancing to the second round. “They are all going to be tough games-games in which the teams take points from each other,” he said. “Take Morocco. They are a lot better team than people give them credit for.” 

Bjornebye draws comfort from the fact that Norway are highly-rated this time around, despite their failure four years ago in the United States. “We were underdogs last time and that didn’t help us, so we don’t mind that people are expecting more from us this time around,” he said.

Olsen’s phenomenal record as a coach certainly points to the Norwegians enjoying greater success in 1998. In 79 matches under his command, Norway have won 42, drawn 22 and lost just 15.