However, there’s more to Norway’s success than quotas, according to H\u00e5kon Gr\u00f8ttland, head of player development at the Norwegian Football Federation.<\/p>\n
He says two big changes over the past 25 years have made a huge difference – the increase in the use of artificial pitches, and more resources being put into coaching and talent development.<\/p>\n
Gr\u00f8ttland says artificial pitches allowed football to develop from a summer game to a year-round sport, turning Norway into a proper football nation.<\/p>\n
Between 2016 and 2025 alone, 539 such pitches were built, with another 586 redeveloped.<\/p>\n
Nearly all are open and free to use, so long as official games aren’t taking place.<\/p>\n
Gr\u00f8ttland says changes to player development have provided the second boost to the country’s game.<\/p>\n
“In the period 2010 to 2020 we used a lot of resources, hired a lot of talent coaches, and built some talent systems in Norway, where I think it’s quite unique because it’s a system that link grassroots football and top club football together,” he says.<\/p>\n
That talent system is Landslagskollen – or the National Team School (NTS) – that was established in 2013, following the country’s failure to qualify for Euro 2012.<\/p>\n
It’s neither an academy nor a centralised school, but a national development structure connecting grassroots clubs, districts, top clubs and the federation.<\/p>\n
Eleven of the 15 players who played in Norway’s 2-1 win over Brazil in the round of 16 at this year’s World Cup were part of the NTS pathway from under-15 or under-16s.<\/p>\n
Despite a disappointing group campaign, a return to the World Cup after decades in the desert was a significant achievement for the Scotland national team.<\/p>\n
The question now is whether the next generation can be developed.<\/p>\n
The Tartan Army will not want to wait another 28 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, there’s more to Norway’s success than quotas, according to H\u00e5kon Gr\u00f8ttland, head of player development at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-949735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}