Stale Solbakken’s cardiac arrest shaped Norway coach guiding side against France | OneFootball

Norway meet France on Friday at 21:00 with Stale Solbakken, 58, on the touchline, a coach shaped by survival. He suffered a cardiac arrest in 2001 that has informed his management and priorities, according to L'Équipe.

On Monday in East Rutherford, after the 3-2 win over Senegal, he raced into the stands to find his wife, Anniken, and embraced her.

On 13 March 2001, while at Copenhagen, he collapsed during training. Club doctor Frank Odgaard performed chest compressions for eight minutes until a defibrillator restored his pulse, and Solbakken spent 30 hours in a coma.

Fitted with a pacemaker, he retired at 33 and moved quickly into coaching, as Roy Hodgson believed he would. His methods mix high demands with care for player welfare, and his team talks often urge calm and enjoyment, as before a 5-0 win in Moldova on 22 March 2025.

His career spans eight Danish league titles, difficult spells at Cologne in 2011-2012 and Wolves in 2012-2013, and a slow start as Norway coach from 2020. He missed the 2022 World Cup and Euro 2024 and absorbed fierce domestic criticism, including from biographer Knut Espen Svegaarden.

Shortly before the World Cup he halted an interview when his pacemaker vibrated, triggered by interference from microphones, a scare without consequences. As staff and players celebrated only Norway’s second progression to the knockout phase of a major finals, his impulse was simply to tell Anniken he loved her.

Source: L'Équipe