• Challenge of hard work to make England team coherent unit
• Manager's drills and techniques have brought rewards
The Norway captain, Brede Hangeland, believes Roy Hodgson's greatest challenge will be to mould England's high-profile players into a coherent team, with the Fulham defender insistent the national side can flourish if they buy into the new manager's philosophy.
Hangeland enjoyed spells under Hodgson at Viking Stavanger and Craven Cottage, where he was a key member of the side who reached the Europa League final in 2010, and will know the 64-year-old's techniques better than England's players as they take on Norway at the Ullevaal stadium on Saturday evening. The centre-half admitted Hodgson's lengthy training drills had been considered "boring" by some of his Fulham team-mates but stressed the team had ended up reaping rewards for the monotonous sessions out on the pitch.
"Roy's attitude is that individual players should always sacrifice themselves for the good of the team, and that will be his main challenge as England manager," Hangeland said. "He has some great players to choose from but the job is about moulding them into a team. I'd say that's much harder to do with the England team than it is for a club like Fulham. England have some top players but they don't always play well as a team. If he can achieve that, they will have an outside chance [at Euro 2012].
"He has a very clear idea of how to do things but, and I'm speculating, maybe he will have to try to change it slightly with big-name players. He'll be pragmatic and try to get the most he can out of them. It could take some time before they reach their maximum level under Roy but they don't really have time: they have to crack on and see how it goes. That's where he's probably happy to have really good players. It's his job to make them gel.
"His main strength is the way he organises a team. The way he plays is all about the shape of the team, you have to be compact, and he demands that everyone knows his job. At both Viking and Fulham he made a team much stronger than the sum of its parts. He is very clear in what he wants to do and the key is whether the players accept those ideas. He keeps going on and on and on at you until you can't help but understand exactly what he wants. Some of the lads at Fulham used to say his training sessions were boring because they were so repetitive but after a while we all understood. When the hard work starts showing with positive results then you become happy to do whatever the manager wants."
The defender believes Hodgson's team will adopt a slightly more "direct approach" than his predecessor, Fabio Capello, and drew comparisons with the style promoted by his own national head coach, Egil Olsen. "He speaks my language," said the former Wimbledon manager of his opposite number. "In my opinion, they should go more direct. I am a more direct manager but, even here, people don't agree with me. I guess in Norway I belong to a little group [of one], and in England people don't like the direct approach and such strict defensive organisation."
Olsen is unbeaten in four meetings with England – drawing three and beating Graham Taylor's side in 1993 – and hopes to maintain that record on Saturday. "I've never lost to them or Brazil," he said. "I hope Roy does well with them, but loses this game. It is much, much tougher to be England manager than coach of the Norway team, but his salary is better." Read More
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