Odegaard injury concerns calmed by manager

Oslo — Norway manager Stale Solbakken has moved to ease mounting anxiety over Martin Odegaard’s fitness, insisting his captain is “very much getting going now” and could return to action for Arsenal in the coming days.

The 27-year-old playmaker has not completed a full match since late 2025 and has sat out Arsenal’s last seven fixtures with a knee problem, taking his season tally of missed games to 22. Odegaard has also been absent from each of Norway’s last three international gatherings, his most recent cap coming in early September.

That prolonged absence was highlighted during Norway’s 0-0 draw with Switzerland, after which former national-team goalkeeper Rune Almenning Jarstein told VGTV the squad sorely misses its leader. “Martin has delivered very well. He is captain and a leader. What he does on the pitch both with and without the ball is missed,” Jarstein said. “Hope he gets well quickly again, because we need him in the World Cup.”

Off-field voices have gone further. Aalesund boss Kjetil Rekdal, speaking on the same network, questioned whether Odegaard’s injury sequence might be the legacy of a workload that began when he debuted in senior football at 15. “Naturally it is worrying,” Rekdal said. “Maybe he will not have such a long career in his 30s and upwards as others who started senior football later. A player who is injured cannot deliver anything at all.”

Solbakken, however, sees no cause for alarm. “Him I am confident about,” he told TV 2 after the Switzerland stalemate. “He has less and less pain. Hopefully, he will play one of the nearest Arsenal matches, and then it rolls by itself. I am not afraid of that, unless something new comes.”

The national coach has already rejected the theory that early exposure to top-level football is catching up with Odegaard, pointing out that each of this season’s setbacks stemmed from impact incidents rather than chronic wear. “That he switched off at a throw-in and got kicked in the stomach, I do not think has anything to do with him starting early,” Solbakken told Aftenposten on the eve of the latest camp.

With club and country calendars converging, Rekdal suggested a pragmatic path: allow Arsenal to chase a first league title since 2004, permit Odegaard carefully managed minutes before the summer, then unleash a refreshed skipper on the global stage. “Now maybe he can think a little Norwegian and selfish for our sake,” Rekdal said. “We get a rested Odegaard in top form in the World Cup.”

Solbakken echoed the sentiment, stressing that the forthcoming tournament, not March friendlies, represents the ultimate objective. “He is desperate to play matches and come to these camps, but it is the World Cup that counts,” he said.

All eyes now turn to the FA Cup tie against Southampton, where Odegaard is expected to make his long-awaited comeback and, in Solbakken’s words, allow the momentum to “roll by itself.”