The former Celtic manager Ronny Deila has revealed he inspired his new side to a crucial win – by stripping naked.
Deila is in charge of Valerenga in his native Norway and with the team lingering just above the relegation zone, they faced a vital game against Brann last month.
So Deila – who famously celebrated avoiding relegation with Stromsgodset by leaping about in his underwear – decided the best way to relax his men before the match was to bare all in a team meeting. It worked a treat, as the Oslo club grabbed a much-needed 2-1 win.
“A lot of people have probably seen me nude already,” Deila told the Norwegian news website VG. “We have to have fun in all the seriousness.”
The Valerenga midfielder Herman Stengel said Deila’s striptease was just what the squad needed to lighten the mood. “I don’t know if it was pretty, but it worked well,” he said.
“It was important to offer ourselves. It was what he was trying to say. We must dare to make fools of ourselves. It must be on the pitch as well. We know we’re good footballers and we can cope with it all.”
But Deila – who won two league titles with Celtic before being replaced by Brendan Rodgers in the summer of 2016 – said he would not be making his ‘Full Monty’ act a regular occurrence. He said: “I cannot do it every time. Then it loses the surprise effect.”
The captain, Christian Grindheim, said: “No one was really disappointed that he has not done it again since. It was perfectly fine. It was a metaphor to try and be ourselves. He wanted us to relax our shoulders.”