The Big Interview: Robin Shroot
The Englishman is enjoying a spell as Rosenborg assistant manager, helping the Norwegian giants to UWCL football and the domestic cup. He talks to WFC about his journey from EFL to 10 years abroad...
Robin Shroot is perhaps an unfamiliar name to English women’s football fans, despite being English. The 35-year-old, born in Hammersmith in London, is making waves overseas though as assistant head coach of Rosenborg in Norway.
While former Manchester United assistant Martin Ho has grabbed most of the headlines since taking over SK Brann a few months ago, Shroot’s association with the country stretches back almost a decade, and behind the scenes his coaching philosophy has had a major influence on several of Norway’s top talents.
Somewhat of a journeyman during his playing days in England, Shroot began life in the lower leagues, before an impressive nine goals in 12 games at the start of the 2008-09 season for Harrow Borough saw him snapped up by Premier League promotion hopefuls Birmingham City.
After just one appearance, he played for the likes of Walsall, Burton Albion and Cheltenham Town on loan, before making 63 league appearances for Stevenage up to 2014, when his Norwegian adventure began.
“I had quite a challenging last season at Stevenage,” says Shroot, who is open throughout about the mental health challenges he faced during his career and how it has influenced who he is as a coach. “I’d always wanted to play abroad so I went to train with Sarpsborg for a week and I loved it. I was desperate to come, but for one reason or another it didn’t work out, so they recommended me to a club on the west coast where I played and coached, and that was really the start of my Norwegian life.”
10 years on, he is now settled there, and as we speak is cooking at home in Trondheim where he now works for one of the nation’s biggest clubs, just after helping his side clinch a first ever Champions League spot, as well as the Norwegian Cup for the first time since merging with Rosenborg BK in 2020.
The club he originally joined though was Hødd, where he scored an impressive 16 goals in 23 league games, including three hat-tricks ending up as the second top scorer in the league, and another 19 in 48 in his second spell either side of a brief move to Sogndal.
“The experiences I had from a young age…I suffered from mental health issues throughout my career, performance anxiety, as a result of coaches I encountered…”
It was here he started his coaching journey, working with the under 16s girls team, and recalls his history of coaching back home alongside being a semi-professional footballer and how it sparked his love of coaching.
“I was quite fortunate that before I became a professional in England, I spent four years in non-league and I supplemented my £50 a week at Harrow Borough by working as a P.E. assistant in various primary schools in south London.
“One was a school for kids that had been kicked out of mainstream education and one a school for kids with Asperger’s Syndrome. I had quite a diverse experience of all genders, all ages, all backgrounds.
“I started when I was 16 and also ran for a period of time an after school girls club in Wandsworth, so yeah, from a young age I was involved in coaching all genders and abilities. When I moved to Norway, I asked for coaching to be part of my playing contract and they gave me the U16 girls, and from then on, I stuck with it.”
He adds “I just love coaching, it was never about I had to coach men, if anything being totally honest I became very disillusioned in my own career and to be given the chance to help people who historically haven’t had the same opportunity and money, their reasons for being in football align more with mine - the love of the game. It was never about the money for me, I’m extremely proud to work in the women’s game for those reasons and to help the development of the women’s game, because so many people have fought so hard just to be given an opportunity.”
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Shroot describes the players he works with as “more humble” and “more curious” when it comes to wanting to learn and actually be influenced by their coaching, and he believes a lot of coaches transitioning from the men’s game to the women’s game have experienced the same thing.
After a third spell with Hødd after a brief move to the USA with Nashville, Shroot hung up his boots in 2020 and took over Hødd’s women’s first team before joining Rosenborg in 2021, initially as the academy director for girls, before moving into the first team set up as assistant to Steinar Lein this season.
When I ask about his own experiences, both positive and negative, have influenced not just his own coaching style, but how he approaches people as a coach, he is enthusiastic in his response and the chance to tell his own story.
“That’s a brilliant question and I’m glad you asked because it’s the sort of thing that makes me reflect heavily,” he says. “The experiences I had from a young age…I suffered from mental health issues throughout my career, performance anxiety, as a result of coaches I encountered.
“For me, it’s just give people love, belief, confidence, make them believe they can go on and be brilliant, with the ‘I’m going to support you and give you everything, but it’s going to hurt and you have to accept life will throw you many challenges and we will help you through those and our belief in helping you is more important than x’s and o’s’. People may lose sight of that in business and not one philosophy trumps another, that’s just me. I want the people I work with to have better days in what we all love the most.
“I think everything I experienced from when I was a child playing academy football up to when I finished, everything I do and am is rooted in the experiences I had in my life and career. When I started this job, I sat down with parents of young girls and I was honest with them and said ‘probably eight out of 10 experiences I had in football will be perceived to be negative. This game is brutal, it will hit you hard, you have to understand what your daughter might experience and that’s the cost you have to accept to pursue a career in elite sport’. But the reward of waking up and playing football in the fresh air every day is what kept me going, that love of football kept me going.”
Half a dozen Rosenborg players are regulars in the Norway senior squad, with several more part of the under 23s, while they also have senior internationals for both Denmark and Iceland.
In the past couple of years, Shroot has helped develop and coach the likes of Julie Blakstad and Emilie Bragstad before they joined European giants Manchester City and Bayern Munich respectively, and the assistant coach knows full well right now the Toppserien is somewhat of a feeder league for bigger leagues around the continent.
“The league is high profile enough that if you develop and are fortunate enough to get an opportunity at the top level, you can get that move. The Toppserien is a great stepping stone and I was given an opportunity where I’d just started applying for jobs.
“I knew the head coach here, and while I’d still like to think I got it on merit, they at first considered me too young. But, I presented my ideas and ideas for developing players, especially in the culture of the club and they offered me the job and my decision to retire from playing was made easy.”
Regarding being able to build on what they have achieved this season as they now prepare for an almost full domestic season before entering the Champions League in just under a year’s time, he adds “The hardest thing for us Rich is to keep those players long enough. The lure from England, France, Spain, Germany, that’s a natural cycle of football. Julie is a prime example, she was the best player in the league for two years and then we lose her. There’s a player now called Anna Josendal, she’s brilliant, but a free agent and she had a WSL offer which didn’t get agreed at the last minute last winter, and we know we can’t hold on to her. There’s nothing we can do to stop that.
“That’s the cycle. Brann’s a great example, they won the league two years in a row and from last season I think six of the 11 left and are playing abroad. [Guro] Bergsvand, [Elisabeth] Terland, Tuva Hansen, Therese Åsland, I’m probably missing a couple, but they’re all in better leagues now and Brann didn’t make the top two this season.”
He does though admit Ho taking over Brann has been a “breath of fresh air” for a league that in some ways needs the publicity of higher profile names. While Norway has always been a big name in the women’s game and won the World Cup in 1995, Shroot admits his own experience has been one of discovering the challenges of getting a nation to embrace the women’s game.
He points to the success Hammarby have had in Sweden of creating a huge following, and we ponder the various factors for why Norway may be lagging behind, including the recent failings of the national team despite talent such as Ada Hegerberg and Caroline Graham Hansen.
“It is and it isn’t,” he says, of whether the game is being truly supported by fans in Norway. “It’s still miles and miles away from doing what they’re doing in Sweden. The rivalry between the top four clubs has been great, the quality has risen and it’s forced those below to increase their quality too. There’s more full-time players and staff, but we’re a long way away from some of the other countries.”
On whether replicating the tournament success and subsequent interest bounce England experienced, he adds “I think you’re right. I think tournament success would help, but I think Norway is a difficult country to put your finger on. The interest for the Premier League is like nothing you’ve ever seen, they are obsessed.
“Everything beside that is like a disappointment to them. The men’s teams are well supported, but Rosenborg were ninth this season, they get 11,000 at home in a 22,000-seater stadium, so we are behind. Would a major tournament help? Yeah, it would, but at the same time I’m unsure of the culture here to…you know?”
As he stops to ponder, it’s clear there’s no real confirmed answer to the question, but for Rosenborg things are at least on the up, though he laments the fact they missed out on the league title by one point after being deducted the same amount for “financial mismanagement”.
But after securing Champions League qualification and a cup final victory over rivals Vålerenga, Shroot’s attention will now turn to next season, with the hope they can at least hold on to a few of their key figures.
But if not, he knows it will once again be an off-season of scouring for the next best Norwegian talents, something he’s becoming adept at, and the lure of Champions League football could and should be another plus.
“You’d think that, and I think you’re right, but the issue we have is take one of the top players who is already at another club who is out of contract, it’s not just us competing to sign her, it’s the other top teams, plus top teams in Sweden, maybe even in England, so then we’re looking at the next best who is 19 or 20 years old and to take that next step with us, and obviously yes we can offer that this season which Brann and Lillestrom can’t just now.”
For Shroot himself, he’s happy in his now old familiar surroundings, 10 years on next year from first arriving in the country he has only temporarily ever left.
But he’s also ambitious, yet won’t compromise on his values to go somewhere for the sake of it, and is clearly happy and content in Rosenborg right now.
“I think the most important thing for me is to align if I’m going to go and work somewhere else, it will have to be with people who understand and appreciate what I bring, rather than a square peg in a round hole.
“I’m valued and appreciated here, but I’m a human being too. I’m excited by how good we can be, to continually develop the level globally. Wherever that might be for me I’m not sure yet.”