September 29, 2008: National team news:

Faroe Islands coach
Jógvan Martin Olsen resigns

In a press conference on Monday morning, where Jógvan Martin Olsen announced his team for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Austria and Lithuania on 11 and 15 October, Olsen took the press by surprise when he also announced that he would retire as coach of the Faroe Islands after these two matches. Olsen’s contract was set to run until the end of this qualifying campaign.

Olsen had been assistant coach under Allan Simonsen and Henrik Larsen from 1996 to 2005 when he advanced to head coach.

Olsen’s time as head coach has been a difficult one. The statistics say: played 18, lost 18.

However, to be fair, it must be mentioned that Olsen hasn’t always had the best player-material to work with, as some of the best players retired around the time when Olsen was appointed; players like John Petersen and Julian Johnson to name two of the very best. These are players who are not easy to replace.

But Olsen did not base his decision to retire on lack of results, however. He said that his main task had been taking care of the generational change in the team, and hedeemed that job to have progressed well now and that it would benefit the team with a change of coach now, or a new voice in the dressing room, as he said.

Olsen also said he missed being involved with everyday league football as opposed to the national team that only play a handful of matches every year.

As a third reason, Olsen mentioned that he had been admitted to the Danish Football Association's P-license course (which is identical to UEFA Pro-license) which runs for 18 months.