Hege Riise: The ‘genius’ who can add an extra dimension to England

Back in her playing days, the England Women interim manager was so good that Even Pellerud, the coach under whom she won the 1995 World Cup, would invite her to train at his subsequent men’s top-tier side so that they could emulate her skills. “It was to show the players how to take good free kicks,” says Per-Mathias Hogmo, Hege Riise’s coach during Norway’s gold-medal triumph at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

“It’s a privilege to have a player like that because it’s so much easier to build the offensive part of the game. But she was always very good defensively. She didn’t go in and win the ball in the duel, but she saw: where is the ball going? Break that pass, and then put us on. I used to say that she’s like a woman Johan Cruyff. She’s dealing with every part of the game.”

Riise, 51, was one of the finest footballers of her generation, not to mention one of the most decorated as one of the few players in the world who can say that they have won the World Cup, the Olympics and the European Championship.

Riise will take charge of her first game as England manager on Tuesday, against Northern Ireland, in the wake of Phil Neville’s premature departure. It would be, at any time, a coup for the Lionesses, but the anticipation is doubtless amplified by the fact that Riise is such a stark contrast to her predecessor. From the outset, Neville was panned — and by many, never forgiven — for his lack of history in the women’s game. No such accusations can be hurtled at Riise, and her maiden press conference — where she came across as firm but fair, candid but uncontroversial — showed a figure cut from a different cloth. When word of Riise’s move to England became national news, compatriot Ole Gunnar Solskjaer broke off from his Manchester United press conference to offer her his endorsement.

“She is a big hero over here,” says Endre Lubeck, a Norwegian football commentator. “She is an extremely respected footballer, and the player with most games for Norway’s national team — women or men — with 188. Riise is also very experienced with the media. There are never any controversies with her. She is so reasonable, calm, professional, smart and polite. She is a person with a lot of competence, the right person for England Women right now.”

The old adage is that every manager knows their own position best. Riise was, in her day, a skilled central midfielder with an unrivalled passing range. In January 2009, she became assistant trainer — or, more accurately, the midfield coach — to the US Women’s national team. “It was just the finer details to positioning or passing,” remembers Dawn Scott, now England Women’s physical performance manager but previously in charge of high performance support at the USWNT for 10 years. “It might just have been moving an inch or step set this way, to cut that out or be ready for this pass. She did have a massive impact with some of those players.”

There will be much that England’s midfielders, too, can glean, and there is a story, from Riise’s US coaching days, of what happened when US international Carli Lloyd decided to dig out footage of Riise’s playing days. Riise’s international career turned on the rivalry between the US and Norway — she played in 34 of those matches, winning 16, losing 16 and drawing two — and the USWNT archives brimmed with videos of Riise, back then one of the few players who had overcome the US consistently.

Lloyd watched the clips, perhaps including Riise’s gambolling, meandering solo run against Germany in the 1995 World Cup final — and responded only with the word: “Wow.”

Not that Riise herself was particularly minded to show off. With hindsight, it is ironic that the most iconic goal of Riise’s career — sluicing between white shirts, her body twisting and undulating like water — contrasts so strikingly with the personality of a player who, away from the pitch, is so insistently humble.

“If they played crossbar challenge or took free kicks at the end, she would nonchalantly take a free kick and her response would just be a shrug,” adds Scott. “And not arrogantly, just very humbly.” Riise had not long hung up her boots and was able to join in training, and “the skill level as a player — you never lose that. She is quiet, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be a good leader. You can still be impactful. The detail and the information you give can have that impact”.

As a player, Riise was among the first tranche of what could be considered close to professional women players in Norway. The Olympic body provided a stipend and the governing body scholarships and clubs a small wage to enable Riise, and those like her, to either play alongside a small job or live completely off their earnings in football. One of Riise’s former team-mates estimates that they would receive 120,000 krone — the equivalent of £14,000, in today’s money, and around a fifth of today’s average Norwegian salary.

Making her international debut in 1990, Riise enjoyed unprecedented success on that stage over the next decade, first in the form of Norway’s 1993 European Championships win and then the 1995 World Cup, at which she collected the Golden Ball.

“I just felt like nothing could stop me out there. Most of the team felt that way in ’95,” she said in an interview with FIFA in 2016. “We had developed a way of training — really intense — that meant we were in the best shape of our careers, feeling pretty much unstoppable by the time the World Cup came around.” The team’s stock was so high that the plane taking them back to Norway from Sweden was escorted by two military planes.

“I don’t know if it’s correct to call Hege a star because she never acted like a star,” remembers Goril Kringen, one of Riise’s team-mates at the 2000 Olympics. “But she’s definitely the biggest star. But you will never see her brag about it, or enter a room like she’s a champion. She has this confidence in herself that she never needs to speak in big words. You always knew, when she spoke, that there was something very wise coming out.

“She could always see those genius passes before anyone else. You knew that if you were in a difficult position with the ball, you can always play to Hege and she would do something clever with it. And she would always tell the others good advice, but in a way that you felt you weren’t being corrected.”

Her World Cup bow, in 1991, saw her play the first game of the inaugural Women’s World Cup, in front of 65,000. Nine years later, she was an Olympic gold medallist, the final played in front of 22,848 in Sydney. The US had opened the scoring after five minutes, then made it 2-2 after 92 minutes to take the game to extra time. Brandi Chastain subsequently described it as “the greatest game I’ve ever been a part of” and the New York Times report vowed that it “will be remembered as one of the greatest women’s games ever played, wide open and full of wild swings, breathless creativity, stirring defense, rapturous victory and inconsolable defeat”.

“I remember the break before extra time,” recalls Hogmo. “Hege, in her quiet voice, just said: ‘Listen. We know we are the best trained. We know this. We’re going to beat this American team’.” Riise provided the delivery — a perfectly timed scoop from the halfway line — for Dagny Mellgren’s winning golden goal. In 2019, the Olympics YouTube channel ranked the move as the best golden goal in Olympic football. Norway had a proud history in Olympics handball but that side were the first Norwegian football team to win a gold, following a bronze in 1996 in Atlanta.

“This team is one of the top 10 in the history of Olympic moments,” Hogmo adds: “Hege has been lifted up as a leader in all sports in Norway. She was not talking much in the open room, but she, in her quiet way, would talk and lead. She was a discussing partner with me as a national coach, and we discussed the way of playing and other questions regarding the team. You could see that she could become a coach in the future because of the way that she saw football.

“The investment we had been doing for those four years before the final — Hege was kind of symbolic of the professional way, or how to develop herself as a player. As a leader, she was a very, very strong-minded person, always asking questions. Don’t focus on the result — it will always come as a consequence of the daily work. That’s the main philosophy.”

In 2007, following Riise’s retirement, she took charge of Team Strommen (renamed LSK Kvinner Fotballklubb a few years later) in the top tier of Norwegian women’s football. There, she coached the Canadian Rhian Wilkinson — a right-back who is now her assistant at England — and the following season, the club finished runners-up in the league and cup.

She won plaudits as a tactically astute “tinkerwoman” and laid the foundations for a more professional model that now allows the players to train twice a day. Although a full-time position now, Riise’s role was voluntary. “Because of Hege, LSK has become one of the best clubs in Europe and played Champions League,” says Ranveig Karlsen, who coached at LSK alongside Riise.

Riise in charge at LSK Kvinner (Photo: Norges Fotballforbund)

In 2011, following her stint in America, Riise returned to LSK Kvinner to assist Monica Knudsen. From 2014, they won seven straight titles, with Riise the head coach from 2017. They were a possession-heavy side, Knudsen explains, playing a 4-2-3-1 “with inside wingers and high full-backs, and it depends a little bit on who she has at No 10”. More recently, they have had to become a more pragmatic side — they lost Guro Reiten, Riise’s favoured No 10, to Chelsea.

Twenty years on from her Olympics triumph, England began advertising for an interim assistant following Bev Priestman’s move to Canada. “I actually reached out to her straight away,” Scott says. “When she left the US — and we’ve stayed in touch all the time — we always keep saying, we wanted to work together again. It just felt like it was too brief. And it was unfinished business.” In previous years, Riise had always wanted to make a role for herself in Norway, but now began speaking to Scott. “She was like: ‘I’m not sure whether to apply…’. I’m like: ‘You’ve got to apply! This might be our chance to work together!’.”

She submitted an application, then Neville left early for Inter Miami. Riise was bumped up to interim manager, a role she will fill until Sarina Wiegman takes permanent charge. Wiegman is expected to step up after the Olympics in the summer, with Riise currently set to be on Team GB’s staff in Toyko. “She sent me messages, like: ‘This is your fault’,” Scott laughs. “She sees the game and she senses players. Some of the clubs in Norway don’t have the luxury of what we have in England right now in terms of staff, resources. And I think, in her eyes, she’s like: ‘I’d love to have the full sports science complement that we had with the US team’, and see how that can benefit the work she does.”

Riise was part of the US staff for the 2012 Olympics. Some games were played at St James’ Park, where Scott had a season ticket as a child, and Scott has a photograph of her and Riise on the balcony at the Hilton with the Olympic torch, which had passed through Newcastle en route to London that day. The nomadic nature of Olympic football means that teams do not visit the Olympic Village until the final stages, when organisational chaos ensues. “You walk longer distances every day from your room to the dining room,” Scott says. “It’s half a kilometre each way, so suddenly the players have done 4km of walking.” The US played six matches in 17 days and there is so much “noise”, Scott says — players can go watch other events — that a schedule is not easily implemented.

“It’s those people who can adapt and survive and get through it who are going to be the most successful,” Scott says. “With the Olympics, there’s the scouting of the opposition and she’d be filling in in training because sometimes you didn’t have enough players for 11 v 11. She could thread a pass through the eye of a needle. I just feel excited how she could give, especially (to) some of those central midfield players, little snippets or nuggets that might just help them be even more impactful than they are now. That’s the exciting piece.”

(Photo: Lise Aserud/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)