Tomorrow's match against the U.S. will be the first time since 1991 that Bente Nordby has not been in Norway's player pool. Since I sure am going to miss seeing her in the nets for Norway, I decided to show my support by listing a few things that she has accomplished since 1991 when she first played in the nets for Norway at the age of 17. In her very first game for Norway Bente helped give Norway a 1-0 victory byholding the U.S. scoreless. Back in 1991 during the first ever Womens World Cup, Bente helped Norway to a strong second place finish. In 1993, she was in the nets when Norway won the EuropeanChampionship. In 1995 during the second Womens World Cup, she was one of the backbone players that lead Norway to the World Cup title. In 1996 during the first time ever that women's soccer was held in the Olympics, Bente received the bronze medal. Then in 2000 with all the hard work she had put in with her team, Bente walked away from the Olympics with a gold medal around her neck. When the WUSA first started up, Bente Nordby and Hege Riise went to the Carolina Courage after being the first player selected in the Inaugural Foreign Player Allocation Draft. In 2002 Bente returned to Norway and with her new club team Kolbotn, she and her teammates blew the league away. They won the "Toppserien" championship and Bente only allowed 9 goals during the 18 game regular season.
Thanks for the nice words tesa02 about some of Bente's outstanding accomplishments during her career playing for Norway and more recently for Kolbotn. It is unfortunate that Bente's career in the WUSA was cut short , but I'm sure she really appreciates the fact that she still has fans in the U.S.
Picture I thought appropriate to the thread. Kara http://www.europeanwomenssoccer.com/norway/norwaysenior/norwayteam2.htm
Yeah, but despite being possibly the greatest ever women's international goalkeeper, she was little more than crap in Carolina. She flat out lost the job to Kristen Luckenbill, who went on to win GKoY the next season.
well lets see. she has played at the highest possible level and has succeeded. for carolina the first season, it certainly wasn't the keepers fault for having such a poor performance. the defense was lacking some serious skills. the communication between the defenders and nordby was not the greatest and that certainly isn't all nordby's fault. nordby is an international player dont forget who's first priority was her national team, so she couldn't be in carolina training with her club team as much as she would have liked. again on the international player topic, she was an international. different countries play a totally different style than the americans and since most of nordbys defenders were americans,they weren't in tune together.
With international stars Wen Lirong, Carla Overbeck, and Tiffany Roberts in her backline? To be fair - it wasn't all her fault, but if you were at the games, she certainly was to blame for much of it. I've never seen a professional keeper make as many mental mistakes as Bente did in the Carolina net. She lost confidence in her backline, then started making absolute howlers. It was awful. She was awful, the backline was awful. Lucks was better.
Hey all, unless I am mistaken, this is a Bente TRIBUTE thread, not a pick on her because she didn't do well in Carolina. Start a new thread please to compare Bente and Lucks.
This is the Carolina Courage forum. As a big fan of the Courage, I have no interest in a tribute to a player who, for my money, was not a good team player here. Put the tribute in the Norway forum.
Andy, I disagree with you, but it isn't worth an argument. Let's just say we disagree. So, Tesa, as a Bente fan, posted a Tribute thread here. No biggy, BTW,I don't look in the Norway boards. K~
I completely agree with you Oddball#34. This is a very thoughtful thread that tesa02 has started and I want to do whatever I can to show my support for someone who has put this much time and effort into making such a positive contribution to BigSoccer like this. If someone isn't a Bente Nordby fan, then they can always choose to ignore a thread that is clearly dedicated to her. If someone still has issues about the way that Bente played for the Courage, it would be much more appropriate to start another thread to discuss this instead of posting something negative in someone's tribute thread. As far as I can tell, BigSoccer doesn't even have a "Norway Forum." Since the Courage used their number one pick in the inaugural foreign player allocation draft to select Bente Nordby and Hege Riise, I feel that the Carolina Forum is a very appropriate place to post a tribute thread for Bente.
Norwegian Team Photo Thanks so much Oddball#34 for posting this picture of Norway's "A" team that of course includes Hege Riise and Unni Lehn. It was probably taken during the fall of 2001 prior to one of Norway's World Cup qualification matches because I believe that was the last time that Ragnhild Gulbrandsen was healthy enough to play for the Norwegian National team.