Club doctor Frank Odgaard performed immediate CPR on the pitch, and paramedics were able to resuscitate Solbakken in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
He was in a coma for 30 hours and later discovered he had an undetected congenital heart defect. The incident forced him to retire from professional football at age 33, after which he became a highly successful manager, including winning eight league titles with Copenhagen.
Today he has opened up about the experience to NRK podcast "Drivkreft".
Solbakken had a defibrillator implanted and had to undergo several examinations to test his limits.
Senior physician and professor at the Department of Cardiology at the University of Oslo, Peder Langeland Myhre, describes the study as follows:
“Pace” is to stimulate the heart with electrical impulses from a pacemaker or ICD". Today, Solbakken talks candidly about what he experienced after his heart stopped beating during the test.
"Then I saw a light blue tunnel, so to speak. It was a lovely light blue. So when I was woken up, it was like: “No, I could have stayed there a little longer,” explains Solbakken.
Solbakken says that he asked the doctors what the reason could be for seeing a light blue tunnel. The explanation he received was that “the brain was probably still working.”
Now the 58-year-old Solbakken will lead Norway in the country's first international final round tournament in 26 years.
"There's still a long way to go. Now it's starting to get closer. It's been a long time since we qualified in November, and after that we've only played a couple of private international matches."
Norway will face Iraq, Senegal, and France at the World Cup. The next task for Solbakken will be to select a large squad of up to 55 players, after which the final squad will be cut down to 26.