Riise achieved great success as a player for Norway and will now manage them in this year’s FIFA Women's World Cup. A technically gifted and hard-working midfielder with excellent vision and passing ability, she also scored an impressive 58 goals in her 188 games for Norway between 1990 and 2004.
Riise began her club career with Setskog-Høland where she won the Norwegian Cup in 1992. She then achieved success with Nikko in Japan, winning the league championship in 1996 and 1997 alongside the cup in 1996. Riise then returned to Norway to play for Setskog/Høland again and Asker, where she lifted the cup in 2000.
Later that year, she joined Carolina Courage in the United States where she won the WUSA Founders Cup II in 2002, scoring against Washington Freedom in the Championship game. Two years later, Riise returned once more to Setskog/Høland who had now become Team Strømmen. After retiring from playing in 2006, she remained at the club as a chief trainer.
She then became assistant trainer for the United States in 2009, helping guide the team to the final of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2011 and Olympic gold in London in 2012. She returned to Norway again in 2012 to re-join Team Strømmen who were now LSK Kvinner. Here, she was assistant coach before becoming head coach between 2016 and 2020. The side won six successive titles between 2014 and 2019.
Riise took temporary control of England in January 2021 before Sarina Wiegman could start in September of that year. While with England, the Norwegian managed the Great Britain Olympic Team at the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics, guiding them to the knockout stages.
She followed this by leading Norway's Under-19s side to second place at the 2022 Under-19 European Championships, before becoming Norway’s senior team head coach in August 2022.
Among all these honours, her achievements with Norway as a player stand out; she won the Women’s European Championship in 1993, the Women’s World Cup in 1995 and Olympic Gold in 2000.
Alongside Gro Espeseth and Bente Nordby, she is one of only three players in the world to have won all these honours. She was also the first Norwegian to become UEFA’s Best Female Player in 1993.
Furthermore, at the 1995 World Cup, she won the Golden Ball as best player, and, in the same year, she became the first female to be crowned Norwegian Player of the Year. In 2003, Riise was also voted as the best Norwegian female footballer of all time.