Oslo Center (Nitavisen): Erik Thorstveit has become a well-known and beloved football pundit in Norway after several decades on Norwegian television.
His television career began on Canal+ shortly after he shelved his goalkeeper gloves in the 1990s. On TV Norge he was, among others, Royal League and Tufte IL, while working on the television campaign for NRK. On TV 2, it hosts Matchball on Mondays, and in recent years has hosted the English Premier League, the national team and Norwegian football.
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– It's not that easy for me
The former goalkeeping giant plays the role of presenter and 'expert' with the utmost naturalness, but it wasn't always that way.
– This was not something I thought I would master. I thought it was a high pulse to be on TV. I remember my first TV appearance, it was “difficult,” Thorstedt tells Netafsen.
Because he witnessed that there is one thing he does not like to do on television.
– I found that being alone in front of the camera is not easy for me, but when there are people around me it goes well. For example, working as a news anchor works very poorly.
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The 61-year-old thrives when there are others in the studio around him to play with, but when all the attention is directed at him, it gets worse.
– I can be a presenter, for example I had Matchball Monday, but there are too many people to play with. When it's just you in the spotlight, when it's just you standing in front of the camera, I actually struggle a little bit with that. With other people it's okay. You've done it a million times, and you get used to it. The best TV is when you forget you're actually watching it, when you sit and talk freely as we do now, he says.
Too sensitive for the coaching job?
Many of his teammates in the Drelos era became coaches after finishing their playing careers. For Thorstveit, this has become more than just a role as goalkeeping coach for the Norwegian national team.
– Can you imagine being a football coach?
– Where I had the best opportunity to move things forward was to be a goalkeeping coach. You can see what big steps have been taken now and how much they have evolved. After all, we also tried to be a little innovative, compared some aspects to ice hockey and tried to find similar techniques. I think that's where I gained my experience with these things.
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The former Tottenham goalkeeper is also unsure how successful he will be in the Storm in a senior coaching job.
-You have to be very strict as a coach. Maybe I'm a little sensitive about some things. I think standing out in that storm without taking it personally and messing with it, it's not always that easy. “There are a lot of assistant coaches who step up and become head coaches and say it's completely different,” Thorstedt says.
He points to the model and distribution that Geir Bakke and Peter Myhre had in Lillestrom as a solution that could work for him as well.
Retirement life in Italy awaits
However, he will likely remain in the television position until the day he retires. It is unlikely that he will follow the example of other 1990s heroes such as Bjorn Dali, Alfie Haaland and Espen “Chambo” Knutsen in traveling to Switzerland when the time comes.
– Italy is our thing. My wife is very fond of Italy, she speaks Italian, and she is very happy that her son is playing there now. It could not be better. “We're in Italy a lot, so we'll probably be there a lot every now and then,” Thorstedt says of retirement.
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However, he has no plans to join TV 2 anytime soon.
-For now, we just have to try to keep it going as long as possible. I'm just a freelancer for TV 2, so they can fire me “any time”.
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