Hege Riise's Olympic experience cited as reason for Team GB appointment
Baroness Sue Campbell has described Hege Riise’s Olympic experience as being critical to why the Norwegian was hired to lead Team GB at the Tokyo Games this summer.
Riise, who joined England as an assistant coach in January before taking charge of England’s February camp following the departure of Phil Neville, won Olympic gold in 2000 and was an assistant coach to the gold medal-winning USA women’s team at London 2012.
“All of the research shows us that people that haven’t been to an Olympics before really struggle with their first Olympics, and that includes coaches,” said Campbell, the Football Association’s head of women’s football. “It is a unique and very different experience to a World Cup, for example. It’s essentially 26 World Cups of different sports happening simultaneously. The village itself is a different environment. And I think the fact that Hege has been there, both as a player and the coach, will really help her to prepare the team the very best she can.”
How Riise and Rhian Wilkinson – who also joined as a temporary assistant coach in January and will assist Riise in Tokyo – managed England at the end of February was important, with the leadership group of England players also asked for their input.
“It was really important, for me, to see the February camp and to look at how Hege and Rhian worked with the players and that was excellent,” Campbell said. “For somebody coming in with the amount of time that she had it was really both an excellent demonstration of how you come in and set a tone, a set of values and a way of working. So the evidence was in front of us, let alone her amazing record as a coach.”
There will be two Team GB camps before the Olympics – one in June and one in July at Loughborough, with a friendly also set to be organised during that timeframe.
Riise, who won Euro 1993 and the 1995 World Cup as a player with Norway, will reduce the list of players on whom she and her staff focus to 35 next week, before an 18-player squad being announced in May. The 51-yearold has insisted that while the majority of the squad will be English, every eligible player will be given a fair shot. “I think that’s the benefit I have coming from outside,” she said. “I can pick the players that I believe can go into the Olympics and do some good things there.”
Riise also cautioned that she will not be able to think about the longterm development of England players when it comes to picking her 18 for Team GB.
“Since the squad will be so small, it will be challenging. It will be [about the] here and now, if we can win the gold medal, and from there we’ll pick the players that we think are right for this tournament. I think this is an adventure, but we travel to win, and we need to prepare for that.”
José Mourinho wants to mark his 1,000th game as a manager by giving Daniel Levy a trophy to celebrate after running Tottenham for 20 years.
Spurs have won nothing apart from the 2008 League Cup under Levy, who marks two decades at the club this week, despite the chairman overseeing a period of financial growth off the pitch. It is believed that one of the reasons that the 59-year-old made the controversial decision to replace Mauricio Pochettino with Mourinho in November 2019 was because he wanted more silverware.
Mourinho, who reaches a milestone of his own later this season, is conscious of Levy’s thirst for glory. Although the Spurs manager feels that his chairman should not be judged on trophies alone, he said that he wants to give him a special anniversary. There is a chance that Mourinho’s 999th game in management – currently he has 988 under his belt – could arrive when Spurs, who host the first leg of their last-16 Europa League tie against Dinamo Zagreb on Thursday evening, face Manchester City in next month’s EFL Cup final.
“I don’t think sometimes it’s fair for an owner, CEO, administrator, a president of a club to be judged on trophies because trophies many times depend on others,” Mourinho said. “The work done in this club independent of the trophies that the club didn’t get is undeniable. The club is a big club in many aspects. That’s an incredible work from him as the big boss and the whole structure that works for him.
“But the trophies are the salt and pepper of football and I would love to help that to happen. I’m not a big guy on stats but my 1,000th official match is going to arrive this season too for a career where I’ve been lucky enough to win so many things. It would be nice for him to celebrate my 1,000 official matches winning a trophy for Tottenham.”
Spurs have won their past four games in all competitions. Their improvement has coincided with more opportunities for Gareth Bale, who has six goals in his last six appearances. Bale is gaining sharpness after a slow start to his second spell at Tottenham. The winger has started four consecutive games and was excellent in Sunday’s win over Crystal Palace, though Mourinho does not want to risk the 31-year-old’s fitness.
“I want the momentum to keep going but we have to manage him,”
Mourinho said. “The other day during the match [against Palace] I found Andre Marriner, the fourth official, laughing at us because probably he found my conversation with Gareth funny. We were saying how many more, five minutes more, 10 minutes more? With Gareth the relationship is really good. I would like him to be on the pitch 90 minutes of every match. It is not possible.”