There was a nice article about Hege Riise titled Riise forlenger i Carolina posted this week at the Norwegian website "toppserien.com." Here is a rough translation: - RIISE EXTENDS (HER STAY) IN CAROLINA Both the Carolina Courage and the Norwegian NT can celebrate that Hege Riise has decided to extend her career another year. by Wegard Bakkehaug Riise thought about retiring after the end of the WUSA season that just finished and that would have meant saying "no" to the Norwegian National Team as well as any other Norwegian clubs. - After all, soccer is what I want to continue doing. After considering my options, I chose to take another year, says Riise to Romerikes Blad (a Norwegian newspaper that is published near Lorenskog where Hege is from in Norway). She has decided to stay another year with Carolina Courage where she won the WUSA championship recently. She will spend some of her time until the next WUSA season starts continuing her studies to become a professional massage therapist. As a member of FIFA's new Football Committee she will travel to Zurich on Thursday (yesterday) to talk soccer with well-known names such as Pele, Platini, Beckenbauer, Eusebio and England coach Sven Göran Eriksson.
Great news that Hege will be back. If Valdarama can play at 40, so can she! Hege rules! Seriously, what on earth are we going to do when she does decide to retire?
Well, Carlos is a freak of nature. I don't think she'll make it to 40, but she certainly should be able to play at least one more - if not a few - at a high level. She should have been MVP last season. This is good news, indeed.
I totally agree with you that Hege should have been the MVP last season, but I wonder if in the end it was a good thing for the Courage that she finished second in the voting? Maybe if Hege had won the MVP she might have felt that she had accomplished everything there was to accomplish in the WUSA and that this would be a good time for her to retire from playing soccer. Who knows what Hege's thought process was in making her final decision to return to Carolina, but I am extremely happy to know that she will be back playing for the Courage another season.