At a pre-tournament press conference, Norway’s head coach Ståle Solbakken paused proceedings. He felt an unusual sensation because the pacemaker implanted in his chest started to vibrate. As it turned out, the vibrations were triggered by the microphones at the meeting.
It was a minor scare. Nothing really compared to what happened on March 13, 2001.
Solbakken, then 33, was a key midfielder for FC Copenhagen. What should have been a routine practice session on a bright morning ended with the Norwegian’s heart stopping for a full seven minutes.
“He was clinically dead,” team doctor Frank Odgaard was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
In the hospital, he was kept alive on life support machines and remained in a coma for 26 hours.
“I was told that on the plane (to Denmark), my mum started planning my funeral,” Solbakken said to Tribuna.
It’s been 25 years since he cheated death. And now the 58-year-old has guided a hugely talented Norway team into the quarter-final of the World Cup for the first time. Norway will take on England for a spot in the last four on Saturday.
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This is Norway’s first appearance at a World Cup since 1998, when Solbakken donned the team’s No.6 jersey. The Norwegian Midfielder of the Year in 1995 was also an important player of the national team that had qualified for the Euro 2000. But his career was cut short due to the heart attack in 2001.
“It was a dramatic experience, but it was really worse for my family than for me because I didn’t feel anything. It was simply as if the lights went out,” he told UEFA in 2002. “Even though I will always miss the rush of going through the tunnel, it was the right decision to make.”
Soon after recovering, he started his managerial career.
It started with a successful stint in Norway where he helped his former club Hamarkameratene earn promotion to the top-flight. He later found success at FC Copenhagen, with a few forgetful years in Germany (FC Koln) and England (Wolverhampton Wanderers) in between.
By December 2020, the Norwegian national team came calling.
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However, it was not the most fruitful of starts, and as the team failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup and Euro 2024, it seemed certain that Solbakken would be shown the door.
So much so that, as reported by the BBC, an online poll showed 82 percent of supporters wanted him to be sacked. Yet, the national federation decided to stick with him. Coincidentally, players that had grown up under the federation’s long-term development program, which began in 2010, started to breakthrough to the national team.
There was an uptick in the results.
Norway earned promotion to the top tier of the UEFA Nations League in 2024. And in the qualification campaign for the World Cup, the team won each of its eight matches.
That form continued in the World Cup, as they qualified for the knockout stage. Then came the hard-fought 2-1 wins over Ivory Coast and Brazil to make it to the quarter-final.
At the full-time whistle against five-time champions Brazil, while everyone in the dugout rushed onto the field to celebrate, Solbakken created an unintentional viral moment. He rushed into the stands to embrace his wife Anniken.
“(When I was in the coma) she was left alone with two children. Anniken was only 23-24, and I was amazed at how she managed to cope with this difficult situation at such a young age,” he told Tribuna.
The win over Brazil, at the New York New Jersey Stadium, was another landmark where Solbakken paused to reflect on everything he and his family had dealt with. Now the coach and Norway look forward, with new horizons in sight.
