TRUST Ole Gunnar Solskjaer to steal the show with a dramatic late substitute appearance. Molde may never be regarded as the centre of the footballing universe but for a moment yesterday, as the Manchester United legend made a shock, 11th hour return to his former club on the eve of Celtic's Europa League tie at the Aker Stadium, this beautiful but bleak little backwater was dominating the continent's sports news agenda. As the conditions closed in on the Romsdal peninsula last night you could hardly fail to notice how the arrival of Norway's greatest ever footballing export had quietly stolen some of the thunder reserved for the much anticipated first competitive return of another of its favoured sons.
While Solskjaer's arrival provides a badly-needed injection of star quality for Europe's secondary club competition, in truth it is Deila who remains under increased scrutiny here. Indeed, as some football sceptics were putting it yesterday, Solskjaer - as usual - has timed his run perfectly. Having met with his players just once, he will go with his current and former assistant manager Erling Moe's team selection and let him do most of the talking. It is the kind of perfect arrangement which allows him to gain kudos in the event of victory whilst maintaining enough distance if things happen to go south.
Since a group of Viking invaders set sail in the ninth century Norway and Scotland have been interlinked and the latest skirmish between them is a battle for one-upmanship between the two nations' second tier footballing cultures. When Stefan Johansen said this week that Celtic were a better team than Molde and that Ladbrokes Premiership football provides a better standard of football than the Tippeligaen, no wonder it made headlines in Norwegian newspapers.
Deila freely admits that for most people in Norway, quite simply the opposite assumption is now the case. To be fair they have some evidence to back it up. It is Norway, and not Scotland, who have two qualifiers, Molde and Rosenborg, performing creditably in the Europa League group stages; Norway who still have a Euro 2016 play-off to look forward to. It is one of the ironies of this fixture that a Norwegian should return to Norway looking to salvage Scotland's national honour.
“In Norway they think Scottish football is not better than Norwegian football," said Deila. "In fact they think it is maybe worse than Norwegian football. That’s what Norwegian people think. That’s because they see the Scottish clubs’ results in Europe and the national team."
Deila's political answer is that the two football cultures are similar, but also different. While Scottish football needs to reinvent itself by developing players rather than just buying them in, the Norwegian game is less physical, more about attacking play on the Dutch model, that other faded nation when it comes to world football. “I feel proud to be a part of it [Scottish football]," said Deila. "It’s much much tougher to be a manager in Scotland than it is in Norway, much, much tougher. There's history here, and an atmosphere in the games that we don’t have in Norway."
In truth though, as much as nations such as Norway and Scotland like to try to outdo each other, managers these days have only truly made it when they have succeded in one of the top leagues in Europe. For most in this region that means the Barclays Premier League. While Solskjaer got his fingers burned in a stint at Cardiff which lasted less than a year and saw the club relegated, and others such as famed welly-boot wearing Egil Olsen have fallen short, everything hasn't been plain sailing for Deila either in his efforts to adapt to a foreign football culture. Indeed, in a part of the world famed for its natural resources, you could compare his job with Celtic to attempting to make an oil tanker change direction.
"In life you want to develop yourself and find new challenges and to be a manager in another country is very, very tough," he added. "A lot of Norwegian managers have tried it before – three, four or five in Britain – and didn’t succeed. I have tried it as well and it has been very tough. But it has also been an unbelievable challenge. I have learned so much at Celtic. Hopefully I will take another step and win more.
"But it’s a very big culture change," he added. "The pressure is much more here. For players as well as managers. It’s much harder to make changes here than it is in Norway. But we are getting there and, of course, Celtic is a much bigger club. It’s much more enjoyable than being in Norway.
"I don’t think you could ever get bored as Celtic manager. I did that at Stromsgodset in the final year. We had won the league, won everything in Norway. The next year, I didn’t feel so hungry as I had before. I was on auto-pilot a bit."
Solskjaer, a scorer against Celtic on Champions League duty at Old Trafford in 2006, albeit missing for the return match in which Shunsuke Nakamura's free kick won the day, feels Deila is already half way there. "When you come to Celtic, deal with all the demands, and can withstand that pressure, then it gives him a great chance of going to the Premier League one day which is maybe the natural step after being at such a big club," said Solksjaer. "He can go far. He is an innovative coach, enthusiastic and I have a lot of time for him."
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