Football (soccer) coach Egil “Drillo” Olsen refuses to let Dutch football players ruin his dreams of taking his Norwegian squad to the World Cup next summer, even after they trounced his own squad in Wednesday night’s important qualifying match.
“As long as there’s hope, we will try to get nine points at the last three (qualifying) matches,” Olsen said after Norway lost by a score of 2-0. The nine points are needed to qualify for World Cup play.
It won’t be easy. It means Norway will have to beat Scotland, Iceland and Macedonia in the upcoming matches and that doesn’t seem likely. Norway currently has just three points and hasn’t won a single qualifying match yet.
Olsen admitted that even he was surprised by how good The Netherlands’ national team was when it ran over Norway in pouring rain in Rotterdam.
“The Netherlands was better than expected,” he told Viasat4, which had the rights to broadcast the match. He nonetheless felt the Norwegians played a decent match, “much better than we did in Macedonia,” he said, referring to Saturday’s qualifying match in Skopje,which ended in a 0-0 tie.
Heavy rain even seemed to slow down the Dutch players as the match got underway, but they quickly recovered and played an aggressive brand of football strong on offense.
Norway’s defense began well but the pressure got too intense. The Netherlands scored before the break and maintained control until the end.
The next qualifying match will be against Scotland at home in Oslo on August 12.
