© Photo: Fredrik Hagen / NTB
BURNET: Thomas Lehne Olsen.

The grips that made him a national team player: – Never thought I could look into it

LILLESTRØM (VG) He met Ståle Solbakken as an 18-year-old when a scholarship from HamKam gave a training stay at FC Copenhagen. Since then, Thomas Lehne Olsen (30) has hardly thought that the A national team could be something for ham.

Published: 07.11.21 kl. 12:55 Updated: 07.11.21 kl. 14:29

– I have never thought of the national team as a probability, never thought that I can think of it, says Lillestrøm’s 22 league goals strong top scorer.

12 years after he was allowed to participate in A-team training in Solbakken’s old Danish club and trained technical exercises with Jesper Grønkjær, he will be reunited with the current national team manager, when the squad gathers for the World Cup qualifiers against Latvia and the Netherlands next week.

© Photo: Øyvind Herrebrøden
GOD DAY IN THE OFFICE: Thomas Lehne Olsen inside Lillestrøm’s premises at Åråsen.

First, the Åråsen derby against Vålerenga is sold out for the now 30-year-old national team debutant Thomas Lehne Olsen. He was a well-known talent in Norwegian football, but with tough competition from the 1990s in particular, he never got to say more than one U21 international. To the squad that went to the U21 European Championships in 2013 and took bronze, he was at the right age, but far, far away from getting a place.

At that time he had traveled from HamKam to what was Norway’s best team Strømsgodset to become an elite series player. But development and scoring went well in Drammen, and only in Tromsø was he properly established. Both at Alfheim and later at Åråsen, he was an even good striker who was around in series goals this year.

Not enough to be sold to more interesting leagues, not enough to become national team current.

Until this year.

Lehne Olsen describes the sum of a lot of small things as the reason why he has more than double goals, fights for both the top scorer title and a top position with newly promoted Lillestrøm – and now hijacked a place in Solbakken’s squad.

– You learn a little, the older you get, season by season. I have put in some extra working hours, some extra increased, become more curious about things, you talk even more with the players who are closest. Then you may be asking yourself why you have not done it before. But what has been has been. I can not do much with that, reflects the Lillestrøm captain.

The “extra working hours” have been in the video room with Lillestrøm’s assistant coach Petter Myhre and the club’s head of analysis André Schelander. The previous edition of Thomas Lehne Olsen ran too early and too far and placed, himself in poor positions to finish well. He even shot too hard, according to Petter Myhre.

– The looser you shoot, the more control you have. His “stock market” has been the cutting-edge expertise, and then you will use it as much as possible. Men, you have to score around 20 plus, 97 percent must be within 16 meters, says the long-time TV 2 expert, who for years has followed the world’s best football players from arenas and studios.

The Lillestrøm coach is concerned that it is Lehne Olsen herself who should have the credit for how the striker has been reprogrammed. They have put on running timing and body position to be able to handle all posts, which must be an important part of LSK’s attacking play.

– It has a lot to do with how I move in the box and do. Petter and I have put my video of me past versus now. In the past, I guess I have had as many chances as this year, but I have become more effective, says Thomas Lehne Olsen, who has also set to attack as Harry Kane and Karim Benzema to learn.

– There is a difference between football understanding and game perception. When you look at the pictures afterwards, you are happy to see the solution. But perceiving there and then what you should do is much more difficult. There he has taken steps. He has become a much more complete player and is a striker with «the whole package». He can receive, tie up and stick in the back room. And learned to seek the blind side of the defenders. All things have turned out the same, pictures Petter Myhre.

It has not always been as harmonious. On the way to becoming a national team player, Thomas Lehne Olsen has forced balls over the grandstand roof at Alfheim, broken routes at Åråsen, been angry with himself, yelled at himself quarantined and even relinquished the penalty kick responsibility.

– Geir (Bakke) has been to it before this year: My biggest enemy is myself, admits the father of two from Moelv.

– You would not take penalties until this year, either?

– I’ve got a little block on that. I’ve bombed someone up through. In a match this year, I first told Kairinen (teammate in Lillestrøm) that «you take it». Then I said “I’m taking it”. After that, it’s been okay. It should not be the case that a striker gives away penalties, the 30-year-old admits.

He has scored with left, right, head, on long shots and “tap-ins” in the Eliteserien and appeared before the previous national team selection – when Norway barely had strikers left for the matches against Turkey and Montenegro – which is perhaps even more relevant than he did now.

Then it was Molde top scorer Ohi Omoijuanfo who got the last place. Lehne Olsen admits that he thought it was his chance and has in recent weeks basically done as he has done his entire football career: Not thinking anything about the national team.

– To be completely honest: I did not know that it was taken today at all. It came on terribly abruptly, says the new national team player.

See more statistics for the Eliteserien on VG Live.

Published: 07.11.21 kl. 12:55 Up to date: 07.11.21 kl. 14:29