Norwegians don’t care about their national soccer team

Friday 10 October 2008

An opinion poll carried out for Norwegian daily Aftenposten shows a luke-warm response to the Norwegian football team.

Some 36 percent say that they are ‘very’ or ‘reasonably’ interested, but 64 percent reply that are ‘less’ or ‘entirely’ uninterested in the soccer team.

Those who do care about the soccer team, say they want Åge Hareide to remain in charge.

"I’m not surprised. Polls like this are always negative when we fail to get results. If the poll had been carried out after we’d won a match, people would have answer that they believed in the team," says Hareide, to daily newspaper Aftenposten.

He and the Norwegian National Team arrived in Glasgow on Wednesday.

On Saturday Norway plays Scotland in a World Cup qualifying match.

The outcome will be important if the Norwegians are going to have a chance to get to the World Cup Finals in South Africa in 2010.

AS Roma player John Arne Riise wants to please his countrymen, but at he doesn’t worry much about opinion polls.

"All we have to do to get people's confidence back is to win matches and get results," he says.

He thinks the polls would have been better if Norway hadn’t drawn 2-2 with Iceland in the first qualifying match in September.

"People want results. The only thing that counts is getting three points and winning. If we beat Scotland and The Netherlands, the figures will look quite different," says Riise.