FA puts Hege Riise in interim charge of Lionesses but faces Olympics headache
The Football Association faces an evermore complicated situation as it tries to fill the hole left by the departure of Phil Neville, with a decision over who will lead Team GB at the Olympics postponed to the spring and the prospect of a run-up devoid of competitive football.
Following Neville’s decision this week to end his tenure with England Women early, the FA has announced the former Norway midfielder Hege Riise will take charge of a training camp in February, supported by the former Canada international Rhian Wilkinson.
Riise, a former world player of the year and head coach of LSK Vinner, where she was nominated for the Fifa Best women’s coach of the year award in 2020, had been lined up as assistant to Neville before his departure for the MLS side Inter Miami on Monday. She will step up a role, with Wilkinson filling in beneath.
That relationship will be re-evaluated after the camp, with Sarina Wiegman set to come into the head coach role after the Olympics. But the question of who will lead Team GB in Tokyo, a role Neville had been expected to fill, is equally high-profile and increasingly trickier.
It is understood that the FA, under its head of women’s football, Baroness Sue Campbell, has a process for identifying a new Team GB manager. That will not begin until after the February camp.
The search will be complicated by the difficulty of appointing a head coach from the WSL, where the successful candidate would be expected to solicit training data on potential squad players from managerial rivals. With the FA anticipating a decision by the middle of April on whether the Tokyo
Games will go ahead, there is the possibility it may not appoint a head coach at all.
There are also questions over the ability to prepare the squad for the Games, with Covid-19 causing continuing to disrupt international fixtures. The Lionesses have not played a competitive match since the She Believes Cup last March and, on Tuesday, the Danish FA announced it would no longer be participating in a training tournament with England during the upcoming camp.
Announcing the appointment of England’ s new coaches, Campbell said: “I am delighted to welcome Hege Riise and Rhian Wilkinson to the England coaching team, having had positive discussions with them in recent weeks.
“They bring significant international experience and will help guide our players before the arrival of Sarina Wiegman as our new head coach to lead us into the home Euro in 2022. Once February is complete, we will sit down and assess the Lionesses situation and consider next steps for Team GB in consultation with the home nations and the British Olympic Association.”
Campbell is not in the running to be new FA chair after deciding against applying before the 9 January deadline.