Jorn Andersen left his role as the North Korea national team manager as he was left with little choice to do. North Korea was able to qualify for the Asian Cup finals after a successful with Hong Kong in the recent match. Immediately after the game, Jorn Andersen announced that he was stepping down from his role as he has achieved all of his objectives. However, a string of economic sanctions imposed by several nations on North Korea has prevented him from extending his stay with the communist country.
The Norwegian came to the North Korea national team in May 2016 and his contract came to an end on Saturday. However, he was able to extend his goodwill by helping North Korea reached the Asian Cup finals. The economic sanctions were quite hard when it comes to sports.
Even though North Korea was able to reach the finals of the East Asian Championships back in December, the organisers were unable to provide any prize money due to the lack of funds. North Korea ended up finishing fourth in the tournament while the women’s team were able to win the title. Yet, the national team missed out on $70,000 prize money due to the several issues surrounding sanctions.
“I don’t want to stay. It was interesting and I learned a lot and experienced many things, but the economic situation is not so good so it’s not possible to stay.After two years I want to take the next step and hopefully stay in Asia. The team now is stronger and we have seen that in the last game here and in Japan against the strongest teams at the end of last year. When I came here I was given two targets, to qualify for the East Asian Championships in Japan last year and after that to qualify for the Asian Cup,” said Andersen.