Again from the Grauniad
Stale Solbakken will never forget March 13 2001. As the FC Copenhagen coach prepares his side for tonight's game against Manchester United, the memory may fade momentarily but as soon as the final whistle goes he will again remember that some things are more important than football.
On that day 5½ years ago the Norwegian, then a midfielder who had spent six distinctly underwhelming months at Wimbledon in 1997, suffered a heart attack during training with FCK. Distraught players called an ambulance while the team doctor, Frank Odgaard, gave him heart massage. The ambulance arrived after eight minutes but Odgaard was convinced he had died. "He was cli
"Something like that definitely changes some things," Solbakken, 38, said last week. "When I go into a training session or a game you don't think about it; you are just completely focused on what you are doing and want to win at every cost. I guess it is afterwards, when things have calmed down, that it has helped me differentiate between what is really important in life and what isn't.
"My job here at FCK is to create results for the club and I put everything into that but I also know that there are other, more important things in life than football."
It turned out he had been born with a heart defect. He had a pacemaker fitted, but his playing career was over. He had played only 14 games for the club but had made such an impression that he was appointed head coach last year. In between he had coached the Norwegian side Ham-Kam and the Norwegian Under-17s and had been assistant to the national coach, Nils Johan Semb.
The capital club won the league in his first year in charge, 2005, and topped the recently created Scandinavian League this year before qualifying for the Champions League for the first time by eliminating