Cant remember if it has been posted before. Sorry is it has.
May 22, 2005, I know its a bit old, but still a very good read.
The Big Interview: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
His last-gasp goal won the European Cup, but then injury nearly halted his career. Now he's on the way back, hears Jonathan Northcroft
Two is company, three’s a crowd. The sun shone, the waves lapped and the Caribbean was just like in the brochures. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Silje, his long-time partner, had flown there last summer to marry. On honeymoon you want to be left alone, but as the couple walked along the warm sands an unwanted third party was tagging along. Only Solksjaer knew it was there: small word, big presence — pain.
The Manchester United player is too decent a man and loving a husband to have let pain mar his and Silje’s time together, but pain cannot be wished away. So he dealt with it himself. “I thought about it lying on the beach. By the pool. It played on my mind all the time,” he says. “Even going for a walk, you’d get a little twinge. There was always a reminder. It played on my mind: ‘Is it going away? Is it going to go away? Will it ever go away?’ It didn’t spoil the honeymoon. But it was always there.”
How did Solskjaer get to meet his unwanted companion? He remembers the moment precisely. It was a Wednesday night, August 27, 2003, and the game was nearly over. He was playing for Manchester United against Wolverhampton at Old Trafford. “Long pass from Scholesy to the right wing,” he recalls. “The left-back came towards me, I trapped the ball and went to turn inside him. I put my knee down hard . . . and it just happened. I thought, ‘Something’s gone here’, yet it was difficult to believe because it was such a normal situation. How many steps like that do you take on a football field?” Normally an athlete’s thigh muscles help hold the knee in place and absorb stresses, but near the end of the 90 minutes, Solskjaer’s were too fatigued, perhaps, to do the job. Maybe his foot went down at just the wrong angle.
Under pressure, the articular cartilage in his right knee blew a hole, leaving the joint without cushioning and bone to grind against bone. Assuming that he had merely jarred the knee, Solksjaer travelled to Bosnia to play for Norway. “At half-time I couldn’t walk down the dressing-room stairs,” he remembers. He had an operation and came back six months later, but as soon as he played, it was there. The pain. “To shoot with my left foot, I’ve got to stamp my right one down hard, and I couldn’t do it. In the back of my knee it would be like a knife in the back of my leg.”
The failed comeback, that was the low. “The last three months of last season were definitely the worst time. I was playing again but didn’t feel right. I was in pain all the time. Even just walking down the street, it was sore. I was kidding myself I was going to be okay, and deep down I knew it.
“I remember this time a year ago, around the time of the FA Cup final. I was very depressed seeing the lads do things in training I knew I couldn’t do. I’m one of those players who needs to train 100% to be able to play, and mentally and physically I was nowhere near.”
The dread he felt on that Caribbean beach returned on his first day of pre-season training last August. He broke down and pulled out of United’s US tour. The headlines read like death notices: “Time up for Ole”, “Docs say Ole career is over”, “Solkjaer facing retirement”. “Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s playing career was effectively over last night . . . ” one report began.
HE CANNOT recall what it is like to run without pain. His injury was 21 months ago, but the memory of the old, pain-free days seems as distant to him as Barcelona, May 26, 1999. Perhaps somebody from Liverpool will supplant him this week, but for at least a few more days Solskjaer will retain the status he established there: the last man to score the winning goal for an English team in the European Cup final. You know what happened: David Beckham corner, Teddy Sheringham near-post header, and out juts Soslkjaer’s leg to divert the ball past Oliver Kahn. Manchester United 2, Bayern Munich 1. Immortality. People have been knighted for less, yet The Goal is not something Solskjaer likes dwelling on.
“I did a television interview recently and the guy kept talking about Barcelona, blah, blah, blah, and I didn’t know what to say.”
Why? “Because it’s in the history books now. I played 10 minutes in that game. That’s all.”
He is not being falsely modest. Polite when you meet him, warm and wry once relaxed, there are layers to Solskjaer, but here is the nub of his outlook, the dominant trait of his personality. He is a clear, unsentimental thinker. “Why would you want to live on past glories? You can only look forward,” he says.
Looking forward means looking towards the day when there is no pain. He has a vision. He is at Old Trafford, it is late August, perhaps even early September, and he is playing for Manchester United again. Out there, in the soft sunshine of summer’s ending, he is once more twisting, turning, jumping, kicking and running — running free. Pain free. It is 12 months to the day, today, since he last appeared for Manchester United, in the 2004 FA Cup final versus Millwall, and much longer since he scored a goal — against Panathinaikos in September 2003 — but he regards dwelling on such things as wasted energy. He has fought injury for two seasons and had two major operations. We talk for two hours. Not once is there self-pity.
“I’ll sometimes bump into a non- Manchester United supporter,” he muses, “and they’ll say, ‘Are you still playing? Are you in the lower leagues?’ One day you’re a hero and the next you’re in the history books. That’s just the way football is.”
May 22, 2005, I know its a bit old, but still a very good read.
The Big Interview: Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
His last-gasp goal won the European Cup, but then injury nearly halted his career. Now he's on the way back, hears Jonathan Northcroft
Two is company, three’s a crowd. The sun shone, the waves lapped and the Caribbean was just like in the brochures. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Silje, his long-time partner, had flown there last summer to marry. On honeymoon you want to be left alone, but as the couple walked along the warm sands an unwanted third party was tagging along. Only Solksjaer knew it was there: small word, big presence — pain.
The Manchester United player is too decent a man and loving a husband to have let pain mar his and Silje’s time together, but pain cannot be wished away. So he dealt with it himself. “I thought about it lying on the beach. By the pool. It played on my mind all the time,” he says. “Even going for a walk, you’d get a little twinge. There was always a reminder. It played on my mind: ‘Is it going away? Is it going to go away? Will it ever go away?’ It didn’t spoil the honeymoon. But it was always there.”
How did Solskjaer get to meet his unwanted companion? He remembers the moment precisely. It was a Wednesday night, August 27, 2003, and the game was nearly over. He was playing for Manchester United against Wolverhampton at Old Trafford. “Long pass from Scholesy to the right wing,” he recalls. “The left-back came towards me, I trapped the ball and went to turn inside him. I put my knee down hard . . . and it just happened. I thought, ‘Something’s gone here’, yet it was difficult to believe because it was such a normal situation. How many steps like that do you take on a football field?” Normally an athlete’s thigh muscles help hold the knee in place and absorb stresses, but near the end of the 90 minutes, Solskjaer’s were too fatigued, perhaps, to do the job. Maybe his foot went down at just the wrong angle.
Under pressure, the articular cartilage in his right knee blew a hole, leaving the joint without cushioning and bone to grind against bone. Assuming that he had merely jarred the knee, Solksjaer travelled to Bosnia to play for Norway. “At half-time I couldn’t walk down the dressing-room stairs,” he remembers. He had an operation and came back six months later, but as soon as he played, it was there. The pain. “To shoot with my left foot, I’ve got to stamp my right one down hard, and I couldn’t do it. In the back of my knee it would be like a knife in the back of my leg.”
The failed comeback, that was the low. “The last three months of last season were definitely the worst time. I was playing again but didn’t feel right. I was in pain all the time. Even just walking down the street, it was sore. I was kidding myself I was going to be okay, and deep down I knew it.
“I remember this time a year ago, around the time of the FA Cup final. I was very depressed seeing the lads do things in training I knew I couldn’t do. I’m one of those players who needs to train 100% to be able to play, and mentally and physically I was nowhere near.”
The dread he felt on that Caribbean beach returned on his first day of pre-season training last August. He broke down and pulled out of United’s US tour. The headlines read like death notices: “Time up for Ole”, “Docs say Ole career is over”, “Solkjaer facing retirement”. “Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s playing career was effectively over last night . . . ” one report began.
HE CANNOT recall what it is like to run without pain. His injury was 21 months ago, but the memory of the old, pain-free days seems as distant to him as Barcelona, May 26, 1999. Perhaps somebody from Liverpool will supplant him this week, but for at least a few more days Solskjaer will retain the status he established there: the last man to score the winning goal for an English team in the European Cup final. You know what happened: David Beckham corner, Teddy Sheringham near-post header, and out juts Soslkjaer’s leg to divert the ball past Oliver Kahn. Manchester United 2, Bayern Munich 1. Immortality. People have been knighted for less, yet The Goal is not something Solskjaer likes dwelling on.
“I did a television interview recently and the guy kept talking about Barcelona, blah, blah, blah, and I didn’t know what to say.”
Why? “Because it’s in the history books now. I played 10 minutes in that game. That’s all.”
He is not being falsely modest. Polite when you meet him, warm and wry once relaxed, there are layers to Solskjaer, but here is the nub of his outlook, the dominant trait of his personality. He is a clear, unsentimental thinker. “Why would you want to live on past glories? You can only look forward,” he says.
Looking forward means looking towards the day when there is no pain. He has a vision. He is at Old Trafford, it is late August, perhaps even early September, and he is playing for Manchester United again. Out there, in the soft sunshine of summer’s ending, he is once more twisting, turning, jumping, kicking and running — running free. Pain free. It is 12 months to the day, today, since he last appeared for Manchester United, in the 2004 FA Cup final versus Millwall, and much longer since he scored a goal — against Panathinaikos in September 2003 — but he regards dwelling on such things as wasted energy. He has fought injury for two seasons and had two major operations. We talk for two hours. Not once is there self-pity.
“I’ll sometimes bump into a non- Manchester United supporter,” he muses, “and they’ll say, ‘Are you still playing? Are you in the lower leagues?’ One day you’re a hero and the next you’re in the history books. That’s just the way football is.”
