Bodo/Glimt: How ‘team from a small town up north’ are slaying Europe’s…

Bodo/Glimt: How ‘team from a small town up north’ are slaying Europe’s…

The yr that Inter last gained the Champions League, their historic treble season of 2009-10, Bodo/Glimt completed sixth in the Norwegian second division.

We could possibly be right here for fairly a while, itemizing methods to measure the gulf in the respective sizes and worldwide reputations of these two golf equipment, however that appears nearly as good as any.

One of the most historic and storied soccer golf equipment to ever exist – 20-time Serie A champions and three-time European champions – had been overwhelmed on Tuesday, and overwhelmed simply, by “a team from a small town up north”, as their head coach, Kjetil Knutsen, put it after the game.

Even that is an understatement: Bodo is up to now north that it’s positioned just above the Arctic Circle, dwelling to a inhabitants of just over 40,000, all of whom might have fitted comfortably inside Inter’s San Siro stadium.

And this is not just a plucky upstart taking down a light large: Inter are 10 factors clear at the top of Serie A and have reached the Champions League final in two of the last three seasons.

It also wasn’t a fluke, or a mugging that Bodo did not deserve: they hammered Inter in the first leg in Norway and stored them at arm’s size in the second. Despite having less possession (71 per cent to 29 per cent) and fewer photographs (30 to seven) in Milan, they never regarded in real hazard.

Image:
Hakon Evjen celebrates scoring Bodo/Glimt’s second goalPiero Cruciatti/AFP through Getty Images

This is Bodo’s first ever season in the Champions League, having come by way of the qualifiers to achieve the league section, however they also regarded odds on to go slightly quietly out at that stage: after six of their eight games, they had been thirty second in the desk, having not recorded a win. They needed to beat Manchester City and then Atletico Madrid to face a likelihood of even reaching these play-offs, which they by some means managed, however certainly they would not be capable of pull off another upset? As it turns out, they very a lot might.

“Can you believe it?” Knutsen said to TNT Sports after the game, his eyes vast with surprise at what that they had achieved. “I can’t actually believe it. The players were amazing. I’m so proud.”

It’s also value pointing out that Bodo are playing of their low season: the Norwegian league completed in November, and while it does appear to swimsuit them – the end of the home season coincided with their revival in Europe, and so they have not misplaced since – it goes against standard knowledge that a team can succeed without the rhythm of normal soccer.

“It sounds not true!” said Jens Petter Hauge, the winger who began at Bodo, however then left for Inter’s rivals Milan in 2020, before returning in 2024. “What we have done, it’s really, really… I’m so proud of the group. We’re all in this together and we believe so much in this project.”

For those unfamiliar with the project, you need to know that Bodo’s success has not come because of some rich benefactor. This is more ‘natural’, broadly explained by Knutsen’s adherence to high-intensity, high-energy soccer and a recruitment strategy that not only finds gamers who match that method, however also identifies those with uncooked expertise and an “X factor”, one single excellent high quality that everybody else might need neglected because the participant may be uncooked and unpolished.

“Each player we sign has an X (factor),” their former assistant coach Morten Kalvenes told The Athletic in 2022. “Does this player have the specific X that we are looking for? That we can build his development around, and find a position in the team where we can really use it?”

It labored then, after they had been merely bloodying the noses of the big boys in European soccer’s two lesser competitions, the Europa League and the Conference League, however it’s still working at the highest level, and with some gusto.

Image:
Kjetil Knutsen has overseen a miracle in BodoPiero Cruciatti/AFP through Getty Images

They also make use of a former fighter pilot called Bjorn Mannsverk as a psychological coach, who makes use of his personal experiences to coach the gamers’ brains after Knutsen has accomplished the same with their our bodies.

One concept he introduced from his earlier life was ‘the ring’, which requires the gamers to return together in a circle after they’ve conceded a purpose to debate what has gone unsuitable.

“When it comes to flight safety, it was really important that we immediately stood up and were honest about our mistakes,” he told Sky Sports last yr. “It was to not blame each particular person, however we understood that we would have liked to be taught from it. You could make a mistake and survive, however the next one, you might do the same one and you might kill your self. It was actually important to share the errors, so you were not afraid of them. That was a must.

So, to summarise: they do issues otherwise. But once you’re from the place they’re from, and the dimension they are, you must do issues otherwise.

Is their win over Inter the greatest upset in the historical past of the Champions League knockout phases? It might nicely be. Other nominations would possibly embrace Dynamo Kyiv beating Real Madrid in 1999 (however that they had Andriy Shevchenko, a talismanic striker, and had been managed by the legendary Valeriy Lobanovskiy); Deportivo La Coruna producing an astonishing comeback to beat Milan in 2003-04 (however they had been Spanish champions a few years earlier); or possibly Monaco beating Manchester City in 2016-17 (however that they had Kylian Mbappe, Radamel Falcao and Bernardo Silva, who all went on to turn out to be worldwide superstars). This is different from all of those.

It’s definitely one in every of the more extraordinary runs of kind the Champions League has ever seen. It is also, as the soccer data agency Opta pointed out, the first time since 1972 that a team from outdoors the top 5 European leagues – England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France – have gained 4 consecutive games against sides from those nations in the Champions League, or its predecessor, the European Cup. That team in 1972 was Ajax, who went on to win the complete factor.

This is not the first time Bodo/Glimt have made an Italian large look small: in 2021 they hammered Jose Mourinho’s Roma 6-1 in the Europa Conference League. It’s both Sporting or Manchester City next. You would not guess on it being their last miracle, both.

This article initially appeared in The Athletic.

© 2026 The Athletic Media Company

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