A Norwegian football saga – Bodö/Glimt’s wonderful journey in the European Cup

Tottenham Hotspur will narrowly miss the midnight sun on Thursday, as it won't arrive in Bodø until early June. But it will still be light when they play their second leg of the Europa League semi-final. And if they're not on their guard, they might just experience their own Nordic miracle.

Bodö is the first town in the Arctic Circle to host a European semifinal. Its local football club is called Glimt, meaning "lightning." Snow is forecast for this Sunday. Temperatures are expected to reach four degrees Celsius for kickoff on Thursday. A few additional seats are being hastily installed in the press stands of the small Aspmyra Stadium, with its artificial turf pitch. Suddenly, even journalists from India and South Korea have registered.

For the first leg against Tottenham, there were more people in the stadium than Bodo has inhabitants. Around 50,000 live there. In Bodo's entire province of Nordland, there are around 240,000 in an area of ​​38,155 square kilometers – slightly smaller than Switzerland. Glimt is currently planning a new stadium. Instead of the current 8,200 seats, it will have around 10,000. Where would more spectators come from?

In winter, some days have less than an hour of daylight, and because of the mountains, the sun isn't seen for about a month. Outdoor soccer isn't played until March at the earliest. It's a 16-hour drive to the capital, Oslo.

Bodø/Glimt has no major sponsors, sheikhs, or oligarchs. The regular players are almost all Norwegian. The most important players come from the city itself. Norway last participated in a major international football tournament, the European Championship, in 2000. The turnover of all clubs in the Eliteserien is just under 200 million euros, which is less than a third of Tottenham Hotspur's.

Fairy tales, miracles, magic: you can call it anything. How this Bodö/Glimt team made it to the semifinals is really inexplicable.

Trying a traditional approach: Skrei fishing. For several months of the year, the migratory cod swims past the coast. Catching these fish, which weigh up to 40 kilograms, has been considered a special art since Viking times. The most important thing is to seize the opportunity. Just like Glimt does on the pitch, when they suddenly overwhelm their opponents, scoring multiple goals in just a few minutes.

Try football: Glimt plays exquisitely. Coach Kjetil Knutsen, in office since 2018, stands for a clear method and playful drill. Bodö's combination play with short, quick passes through the midfield has nothing to do with the Norwegians' former kick-and-rush style. It looks more like Ajax or Barcelona.

A psychological experiment: Perhaps it wouldn't matter so much that an icy wind is blowing in Bodø and the ball moves differently on artificial turf – if the opponents weren't so afraid of their own misfortune. Spurs won the first leg quite comfortably 3-1, but in the final minutes, you could almost see their knees shaking, and not just because they're famous for always messing things up in the end.

The Norwegians, meanwhile, didn't go home feeling particularly dissatisfied. A two-goal defeat was within their target, wrote the newspaper Aftenposten .

Because it's still Aspmyra. The place where the legendary José Mourinho suffered the heaviest defeat of his 1,186-match coaching career in 2021, with AS Roma's 6-1 loss. Where the other Romans were recently humiliated by Lazio in the quarterfinals. On the morning of the match, snow still piled up on the artificial turf, and temperatures hovered around freezing.

The pitch was cleared with tractors. At the final whistle, Glimt had won 2-0 – only 2-0. The shot-on-goal ratio was 18 to 6. "Every team in the world has problems in Bodø," said Lazio player Gustav Isaksen afterward.

Also back on Thursday is Patrick Berg, who was suspended in London. The midfielder is often referred to as captain, which is true, but not entirely: The armband rotates among up to seven players, in true democratic Norway. Fortunately, the Berg family history is unbreakable. Patrick is the son of Örjan, grandson of Harald, and nephew of Runar. All were Norwegian internationals, all come from Bodø, all played for Glimt.

Among others, for Glimt, because in the past, anyone who wanted to be a professional had to move on. In grandfather Harald's time, clubs from northern Norway weren't even allowed to play in the top division. The official reason given was climate and travel stress; that discrimination also played a role is a very open secret. Football apartheid wasn't lifted until 1972. Glimt achieved its first promotion in 1976, immediately finishing as runners-up. They had already won the cup in 1975.

But after that, the pride of the North seemed to fade. Glimt bounced between leagues, flirting more often with bankruptcy than with titles. In 2010, Father and Uncle Berg had to organize a series of fundraising events to save the club. This was also the time when Ulrik Saltnes arrived from Brönnöysund, a few fjords further south.

Midfielder Saltnes, also captain, is the man who scored the magnificent goals in the home win against Lazio and the goal against Tottenham. He has been with the club continuously since 2011, starting with the B team and also taking care of the first-team kit laundry.

This allowed him to earn a few extra kroner, and while the drum was spinning, he read his books. Saltnes also enjoyed writing, and he began studying journalism. But his career on the pitch never really took off, and he himself wondered whether he was perhaps too cerebral.

A man to whom some attribute almost mystical powers helped to break the deadlock: mental coach Björn Mannsverk, a former fighter pilot with tours in Afghanistan and Libya. He was hired in 2017, and other areas of the club were also professionalized. Glimt was promoted again, and since then, it hasn't looked back.

In 2020, Bodø became the first club in Northern Norway to win the league. They will do so again in 2021, 2023, and 2024. Thanks to their success in Europe, they now generate revenues of around €60 million per season. Instead of arduous away trips with transfers in Oslo, they fly by charter plane. They can bring back international players like Berg, who was unhappy in Lens for six months, or like left winger Jens Petter Hauge, also a native of Bodø but once transferred to AC Milan for €8 million. Their first Champions League appearance seems only a matter of time.

Speaking about the visit to London, Saltnes told the newspaper VG that it was "quite unreal" to think back to where he and his club came from: "It feels so incredibly far away. Like a completely different life."

But from the outside, much has remained familiar, simple, and special. The club donated the proceeds from its home group match against Maccabi Tel Aviv to the Red Cross in Gaza. Apart from Russian-Israeli goalkeeper Nikita Haikin – a penalty-scorer in the quarterfinal second leg in Rome – the squad consists only of Norwegians and a few Danes.

Fredrik Björkan, also a national player and also from Bodø, is the son of the 2017 promotion coach and current chief analyst, Aasmund Björkan. And the successful coach, Knutsen, is said to have never even picked up the phone when Ajax or Premier League clubs tried to woo him.

"I don't believe in miracles," said Knutsen after advancing against Lazio: "I believe in our journey." What can one say if it leads them to a final?

An article from the « NZZ am Sonntag »