Norway forward Erling Haaland (9) celebrates his second goal of the match with teammates during a Round of 16 match of the World Cup at New York New Jersey Stadium on July 5.Vincent Carchietta/Reuters
In 2012, Norway’s men’s soccer team finished the season rated 24th in the world, according to FIFA’s ranking system.
It wasn’t the worst for a nation of just 5.6 million people, but it was far from where the country wanted to be. (The women were ranked higher at 13). The men hadn’t been to a World Cup since 1998. This didn’t sit well with the sport’s guardians in the country.
There was a sense Norway wasn’t just treading water in terms of soccer development, but slipping further below the surface. Something had to be done.
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The following year, Norway established the Landslagsskolen – National Team School (NTS) – to nurture and develop the country’s best young players. They got more serious about identifying the best boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 16 and putting them on a pathway for success, which would include significant time spent at the NTS.
Now, it wasn’t like Norway was a complete nobody in the football world. They had excellent teams in the 1990s and a long history in the sport, with the men finishing third at the 1936 Summer Olympics. But by the time the 2000s arrived, the disparity between the best players on the men’s squad and those at the bottom was too great.
Which could also describe the Canadian men’s team.
Norway’s national football association worked tirelessly in identifying and developing some of the best players in the world, which today include global superstars like Erling Haaland and Martin Odegaard.
The country spent millions building fields where the game could be played year-round, which is saying something for a country where winter temperatures can plunge to minus 30 degrees. There was also a revolution in educating youth coaches (there are more than 700) with more focus put on attacking strategies and problem-solving over the purely brute physical aspects of the sport.
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In their talent search, coaches looked for those youngsters who demonstrated a love for the game – think kids who sleep with a soccer ball at night and dribble it to school the next morning.
How was it all funded? Norway has a national lottery called Norsk Tipping. In recent years, the government directed 64 per cent of its revenue from the lottery to grassroots sports, which amounts to about US$400-million annually. It’s been used to build a national training centre, artificial turf fields and modern indoor football facilities around the country.
Yes, turning a soccer program around takes money.
Which brings me to this country.
There hasn’t been the kind of positive feelings toward soccer in Canada since, well, the women won gold five years ago at the Tokyo Summer Games. But hosting the World Cup has turned up the intensity. There are almost certainly millions more soccer fans in this country than there were a month ago. There is surely thousands of kids who want to play the sport for the first time.
A large part of the buzz the tournament has generated is because of the historic performance of the men’s team, which made it to the round of 16 for the first time. Well done. But not enough. Canadians want more now.
Canada Soccer wants to build the kind of training centre Norway put up more than a decade ago, and which Morocco successfully opened in 2009. It would be a place for the most gifted young players to develop their games. These national complexes don’t come cheap and the one Canada Soccer dreams of building will cost upward of $300-million.
It has to happen.
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I realize you can come up with a list of a thousand other things more important and in need of funding than a soccer centre. In many ways, what the success our national teams and nationally trained athletes like Summer McIntosh give this country is an intangible, a feeling. But when that feeling reverberates throughout an entire country, it provides vivid moments that last a lifetime.
It also gives us a badge of honour to wear. Think about what the national soccer programs mean to countries like England and France and Spain and Argentina. It’s religion. People wake up and go to bed thinking about it and that’s not all bad.
Is a national sports lottery something we should consider here in Canada? Maybe. I know Ottawa and the provinces provide some funding for grassroots sports in Canada but not enough to put us on an equal footing, for instance, with the world’s top football nations.
That good feeling Canadians have right now about the game is something, I suspect, they could get used to. Let’s make it happen.