Viking and the strong men

FC Bayern play in Norway for the first time in a quarter of a century on Tuesday. The country is enjoying a football boom. What makes reigning champions Viking so strong? A hunt for clues in the far north.

When talking to Norwegians about why Norwegian football is so successful at the moment, they eventually bring up the sand. Playing on the sand pitches was “pretty tough” when he was younger, says Erik Nevland. He means it literally: when the pitches froze, which isn’t unusual in a Scandinavian country, it was like skating on grit. Sliding tackles? Fortunately, Erik Nevland was a striker, his focus was on scoring goals.

Nevland, now 48, has been Viking sporting director for the last five years. He’s a good source of information when looking for answers to the question that has been occupying large parts of the footballing world since the World Cup or even earlier: what’s going on with the Norwegians?

They beat Brazil 2-1 in the Round of 16 and were only knocked out by England after extra time in the quarter-finals. In Viking FK and FK Bodø/Glimt, two clubs represent Norway in the Champions League for the first time in 27 years. Norway has a population of 5.6 million, around 370,000 of which are active footballers – including Erling Haaland, one of the world’s best strikers, and Arsenal captain Martin Ødegaard. The Norwegians have never been as strong as they are today.

The sand pitches: Nevland says they’ve been among the main reasons for the transformation of Norwegian football. They began installing artificial turf pitches all over the country about 25 years ago. It’s been possible to play football in Norway almost throughout the year, on consistently good pitches, many of them heated, since then.

The funding for the pitches comes from a financing model that’s typical of the country. Many things are centrally managed and regulated. The best-known example is the oil fund – Norway and Great Britain discovered oil in the North Sea in the late 1960s. The British soon spent their revenues again – for example to finance Margaret Thatcher’s economic policy – whilst Norway founded a state-owned company and later invested large parts of their revenues, including in the oil fund. Today, Norway is one of the wealthiest countries in Europe. The fund is currently worth around two trillion euros, and the parliament may use up to three percent of the fund’s value, roughly a quarter of the budget.

The funding for the artificial turf pitches didn’t come from oil revenues but gambling proceeds. There are two state-run betting companies, one of which only handles horse racing. A considerable part of the proceeds is invested in sports infrastructure, but also in charitable causes. And because betting is rather popular in Norway, a nationwide rollout of artificial turf pitches was possible.

“Football hasn’t been a summer sport for us since then,” says Håkon Grøttland of the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF). The 45-year-old is head of player and coach development at the NFF and has been closely involved in setting up the talent promotion system since 2010. Grøttland calls it a “revolution.” It’s the second reason for Norwegian football’s success for him. To explain the revolution, he starts at the beginning: the moment he saw the young Martin Ødegaard play.

Youth leagues without titles

Ødegaard, born in 1998, wasn’t even twelve years old back then. “You saw from the start this lad was exceptional,” says Grøttland: he was small but possessed a game intelligence that set him apart from the rest and everything they’d seen in Norway until then. Everything that followed, the talent promotion system, the training methods, the academies, basically exists because of Ødegaard, says Grøttland, which may sound exaggerated. But the truth is: they wanted more players like Ødegaard.

The Norwegian talent promotion system has been divided into three stages since the 2010s. Children remain at their local clubs until the age of eleven. Larger clubs aren’t allowed to scout them. “They should simply have fun and enjoy playing,” says Grøttland. That’s why there are no championships or cup competitions at this age level. Children can join a more intense programme from the age of twelve at the clubs’ youth academies – if they wish and are good enough. The academies are assessed by Norsk Toppfotball, the umbrella organisation of the two top leagues which also governs many other areas. Viking’s academy is among the best in the country on five out of five stars.

And what do the fans make of it? Silje M. D. Bussesund and Morten Guldberg are Norwegians living in Oslo and FC Bayern fans. They come to get-togethers at the Bohemen sports pub wearing FC Bayern shirts – she in a Thomas Müller one, he in a Harry Kane jersey.

Guldberg, 48, became a Bayern fan through collecting Panini stickers for the 1986 World Cup. He liked the Germans, and as most Germany players were FC Bayern pros, he liked FC Bayern. It was a similar story for Silje Bussesund, 42: she watched the 2006 World Cup and has been a Bayern fan ever since. She’s also a fan of her local club Vålerenga, which “isn’t really part of the Norwegian success story,” she says with a laugh. She’s still got Bayern, after all.

The FC Bayern fan club Norway has about 80 members, many of them living in Oslo. They meet at Bohemen to watch matches and sometimes travel to Munich. Both are happy that Norway has players like Haaland and Ødegaard, but does that mean more than just a lucky moment in time? “I’m not so sure,” says Bussesund. “It’s our golden generation,” says Guldberg.

Article taken from the October edition of FC Bayern magazine ‘51’.