Ståle Solbakken (born 27 February 1968) is a Norwegian professional football manager and former player who is the head coach of the Norway national team.

During his playing career, Solbakken was named 1995 Norwegian midfielder of the year, and he won the Danish Superliga championship with both Aalborg and Copenhagen (in 1999 and 2001 respectively).

After narrowly avoiding relegation in his first season at the top level, Solbakken was part of the HamKam side that finished fifth in 1993 - a position they have not bettered since.

[citation needed] He was appointed club captain by Lillestrøm and helped the side again finish runners-up in 1996 before he serving one final season in 1997 for the Canaries.

[2] In his six league games for Wimbledon, Solbakken scored one goal against West Ham United,[3] and was twice named "man of the match"[citation needed], but he fell out with team manager Joe Kinnear and was banned from club training shortly thereafter.

Solbakken quickly became a regular player in the side and helped push them to the top of the table but he was unable to complete the season after suffering a heart attack in March 2001.

[citation needed] Solbakken made his international debut for the Norway national football team on 9 March 1994, in a 3–1 friendly win in Wales.

[citation needed] He was a member of the Norwegian team that qualified for 1998 World Cup, where he appeared in two of their group games (against Morocco and Scotland) as well as their second round exit to Italy.

[citation needed] His country qualified for the next major tournament, the 2000 European Championship, but Solbakken picked up an injury shortly before the finals.

[citation needed] In his first years at the club, Solbakken guided Copenhagen to the 2006 and 2007 Danish Superliga championship, as well as the 2006 Royal League trophy.

He managed Copenhagen through to the group stage of the 2006–07 UEFA Champions League, after beating Ajax in the final qualifying round on 23 August 2006.

FC Köln[11] of the German Bundesliga from sporting director Volker Finke, who acted as interim manager after Frank Schaefer quit during the season.

By the winter break Köln sat in tenth place, but their form plummeted in the second half of the campaign and they dropped into a relegation battle.

However, due to a bad start to the 2020–21 Danish Superliga, poor domestic results during 2020 and a failure to qualify for the 2020–21 UEFA Europa League group stage, Solbakken was fired as manager on 10 October 2020.

[25] Norway failed to qualify, and Solbakken criticised the decision to host the tournament in Qatar due to human rights issues and the manner of the vote; the Norwegian Football Federation sent only one representative, an analyst to monitor the team's next opponents, Spain.