“Are you a successful team builder developing your own team on and off the pitch? Do you have good leadership qualities, as well as extensive education and training experience from top-flight handball? Are you clear in your communications? ».

How handball associations employ «landing pages» for job advertisements available on Handball.no. Anyone wishing to replace Christian Berge can leave the application there.

That really liked Håvard Tvedten. NRK’s ​​handball experts were not at all impressed with the way the handball association worked to appoint a new male coach.

– I thought it was surprising. I think the practice of job advertising should be frozen. It’s surprising that they still do this, it’s one of the best national teams in the world and one of the most exciting coaching jobs in the world in handballthe former national team player told NRK.

The association has not contacted the candidate

The Handball Association has for several years advertised the position of manager of the national team – as they do with all other vacancies in the union. When Christian Berge was appointed in 2014, he had to apply for the position like everyone else.

According to Erik Langerud, Secretary General of the Norwegian Handball Association, the appointment process is relatively the same as for all other types of additions. He said that his party had not yet contacted the relevant candidates.

– “No, we won’t do that until we think we might need to expand the list of applicants,” Langerud said.

Tvedten considers this unprofessional and inefficient. He concerns that the biggest coaching name has slipped for Sander Sagosen and other national team stars.

– This is just bullshit. Not many are candidates for such a job. Not a coach of 13 boys from one or another small handball community in Norway would apply for this job, says Tvedten and continues:

– Here, the handball association must have a roster and go after the best candidate and get enter the office and talk to them one by one. There may be rental consequences if this search process takes a long time.

– Can miss the best candidates

Tvedten believes that the application process makes it easy for the biggest coaching names to choose a handball club to lead the work of the national team.

– Say one of the best candidates gets a four-year contract offer from Germany’s top club and have to choose between a job in Germany or perhaps an appointment as coach of the national team. Then you probably have the safest card – and that is the German contract. This can cause us to lose one of the best candidates. “It’s a shame to handball Norway and the national team,” said Tvedten.

Handball Association strikes back

Erik Langerud is not afraid that adding a job to the association will frighten the coach’s profile.

– If a coach has to face the situation that he is interested in a German club and the Norwegian national team, then I would recommend the person concerned to call me and say «Now I am in a different process. Is it possible to speed up the process of managing the national team “, Langerud said of the German example to Tvedten.

At the same time, the Secretary-General emphasized that the NHF expects all candidates – including international trainers – to submit a CV.

– Our principle is to advertise vacancies. Then we look at the mass of applicants and whether we ourselves need to be active. It could be a combination here. Håvard drew some conclusions without me knowing where he got this fromLangerud told NRK.

– Men har de action ein «short list» – current list of candidates?

– No, but we have sat down and thought about who the relevant candidates for this would be, both at home and abroad. We haven’t made it yet «short list». What I can say is that very many have contacted me. We haven’t made it yet «short list» because we don’t want to exclude anyone in the new phase. I think this is an overly simplistic presentation considering how important this work is. We don’t want to narrow it down until we see who’s interested, he replied.

The NHF aims to complete the appointment process by the end of June. So far they have received “a handful” of applications.