After comfortably seeing off last season’s finalists Inter Milan, FK Bodø/Glimt became the first ever Norwegian team to win a knockout tie in the Champions League. It has been a remarkable run so far for Bodø, who are now through to the last 16, especially considering it is their first season in the competition. After winning none of their first six matches in the league phase, they were given odds of 0.3 per cent of qualifying for the knockout stage. They went on to beat Manchester City and Atletico Madrid in their final two games to miraculously book their spot to the next round.
Having now added Inter to the list of casualties, Bodø have shown that they can go toe-to-toe with Europe’s elite. But even more impressive than the results is the brand of football they have been playing. They have scored some outrageous team goals this season — perhaps best exemplified by the win against Inter, which wouldn’t have looked out of place on the walls of the Louvre. Their star man Jens Petter Hauge now has 10 goals and assists in the UCL this season, including a screamer against City. He will be hoping to help his team progress even further in the competition.
What makes this story even more special is the turmoil that the club has endured over the last few years. The team, who play their football in a small town in northern Norway, 80 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, flirted with bankruptcy in the early 2010s and were even relegated to the second division in 2016. However, they managed to bounce straight back to the top flight and secured their first league title in 2020, starting a run of four titles in the next six years and becoming the face of Norwegian football, both nationally and in Europe. They made it to the semi-finals of the Europa League last season, where they lost to Spurs, but nobody could have expected the season they would have in the Champions League this year.
Bodø’s incredible form has left fans wondering just how far they can go in the competition. In the last 16 they will face Sporting CP — one of the weaker sides left in the competition, giving them a real chance of progressing to the quarter-finals. But regardless of how long their fairytale run goes on for, there is no doubt that Bodø fans will remember this special season for a very long time.
“Rosenborg-Bodø/Glimt” by morten f is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.