Key events
Half-timely scorecheck:
Premier League
Nottingham Forest 0-1 Brentford (65 minutes played)
Europa League
Athletic 0-3 Manchester United
Tottenham 2-0 Bodo/Glimt (obviously)
Conference League
Djurgarden 0-2 Chelsea
Real Betis 1-0 Fiorentina
Half time: Tottenham Hotspur 2-0 Bodo/Glimt
45+2 mins: Spurs have controlled – yes, you read that right – a half of football, scored two goals, and take a deserved lead into the break.
45+1 mins: Bodo/Glimt have a chance! Maatta beats Udogie on the right and crosses, Blomberg’s diagonal run from the left to the near post coincides perfectly with the arrival of the ball, and he volleys over from about eight yards!
45+1 mins: There’ll be about two minutes of stoppage time at the end of the first half.
44 mins: Surprisingly the two teams have attempted and completed a very similar number of passes. Spurs have done almost all of the dangerous attacking, but they’ve been quite direct about it. Not a lot of extraneous passing going on.
41 mins: Another long ball out of defence for Spurs. Solanke profoundly outpaces a lumbering Gundersen to reach it first, but the defender gets back to block the shot.
39 mins: Save! Bentancur chests down a clearance and slams a volley from the edge of the area that was roaring into the net until Halkin turns it over the bar (I think Udogie took the ball out of play in the build-up, so perhaps it wouldn’t have counted).
38 mins: Spurs have now had 10 shots, three of them on target (I’m not sure those Bissouma volleys should count, mind). Bodo have had one shot, and it wasn’t on target.
GOAL! Tottenham 2-0 Bodo/Glimt (Maddison, 34 mins)
For the third time already Spurs play a high pass from their own defensive line – Porro this time – behind the Bodo defence. Maddison runs on to it, his first touch takes him wide of goal but forces Halkin to shuffle across, his positioning now uncertain, to cover him, and then he scuffs his shot, which bounces behind two covering defenders and inside the far post!
34 mins: Udogie wins the ball in Tottenham’s half, ignores a pass forward to Richarlison and turns back. There is audible grumbling.
32 mins: Richarlison runs into the area, opens up his body, and scuffs a feeble shot that rolls gently to Halkin.
31 mins: Scott Murray has news of a goal in Bilbao. Spoiler: Casemiro has scored it:
30 mins: Another Spurs ball over the top of the Bodo defence, and Solanke does well to reach it, control it and play it back, but Udogie lashes his volley high, and almost certainly also wide.
28 mins: Jens Hauge goes down theatrically inside the Spurs penalty area. Some Bodo players want a penalty but Hauge, who is aware that nobody actually touched him, is not one of them and the referee isn’t remotely interested.
25 mins: Now Maddison takes a free-kick and again Spurs win the header. Again nothing comes of it, but they have been first to pretty much every ball into Bodo’s penalty area.
23 mins: Another Spurs corner is headed on – there certainly wasn’t any intent to this knock-on, it more bounces off a head – to Bissouma, who profoundly mishits a volley.
21 mins: Richarlison is played down the left by a fine pass, but he completely fluffs his attempt to cross to Johnson, and the ball rolls to Halkin.
20 mins: Bissouma wins the ball pretty cleanly, but Ulrik Saltnes goes down and the referee gives a free-kick.
18 mins: There’s an appealing romance to this game, between a team nobody expected to be remotely good enough to get here and, well, another one. But the downside of that is that neither team looks particularly good enough to be here.
15 mins: Spurs win another corner. Porro sends it in, Richarlison flicks it on, Bissouma profoundly mishits a volley.
13 mins: Spurs have possession in the Bodo half for a while, but the defence is well organised and they can’t find any gaps, so instead they eventually give the ball away.
10 mins: Spurs win a corner, from which Van de Ven sends a header looping into touch.
8 mins: Plus there was Bissouma’s contribution, using his strength to make sure Spurs kept possession after Johnson’s initial header before feeding it back to Porro, who crossed.
7 mins: Chance! Romero lobs the ball over the entire Bodo team and lands on the right boot of James Maddison, 15 yards out, but he lifts over the bar.
5 mins: There haven’t been many occasions this season when Postecoglou’s decision-making has been emphatically and rapidly proved correct, but the selection of Richarlison for this match is one of them. It was his cross from the left that first put the ball into the penalty area, and then his headed assist was just perfect. A lot of players would have attempted to find the net and just given Halkin an easy catch.
2 mins: Bodo/Glimt re-huddle after the goal, goalkeeper Nikita Halkin leading the chat there. Reset required.
GOAL! Tottenham 1-0 Bodo/Glimt
Forty seconds on the clock, and Spurs lead! They cross from the left, but Johnson can’t control his header. It’s sent back in from the right, Richarlison heads it back across goal, and this time Johnson’s got an easy task!
1 min: Peeeeeeep! The visitors get the ball rolling.
Right, preambles almost done. But before kick-off, a period of reflection for Pope Francis, not perfectly observed.
“If any Spurs fans are thinking of heading to north Norway to sample the atmosphere for the second leg (I assume tickets are long gone), I can confirm that the (12-hour) train journey north from Bergen is absolutely stunning, the highlight of an interrail trip to the arctic circle last year,” writes Stuart Jenkinson, as the referee orchestrates the pre-match coin toss. “Every other house/ apartment was sporting a Bodo/glimt flag, as was the local peak, but unfortunately no home games in the short time we were there.”
The players have joined them, and they’re on their way out! One end of the ground is displaying the Spurs club motto by means of holding up black and white plastic sheeting. Flags wave everywhere. One corner is very, very yellow.
Four minutes to kick-off. The mascots are in the tunnel, waiting for the players to join them.
Ange Postecoglou has a chat:
I just think the balance of our midfield and what we’re facing up against. The beauty of Lucas, he was the buy who gave us good balance in there. Tonight Biss [Yves Bissouma] will give us what we need. I think we need to be aggressive tonight. Richie [Richarlison] has been working his way back to fitness. I think tonight his experience, his ability in and around the box, we want to put a lot of pressure on them, and he could help us quite a bit.
We outwork every team, that’s going to be important tonight. After that it’s discipline and organisation to make sure our football gets us through. We know it’s going to be a tough game, we’ve got to make sure we play our football.
“I dunno if anyone has mentioned this, but during a lovely train ride from Liverpool St this afternoon, in a carriage packed with jolly singing Bodø/Glimt fans, I asked one of them where their name comes from,” writes Tom Paternoster-Howe. “Apparently ‘glimt’ means ‘glint’ in English. Seems like a delightful name for a delightful club.”
They were originally named simply Glimt, before adding Bodo to avoid confusion. According to the Cambridge Dictionary glimt can mean “glimpse”, as in the phrase “skimte så vidt”, “to catch a glimpse of something” or it can mean “sparkle”, as in the phrase “være sjarmerende og humoristisk”, to have a sparkle in one’s eye. They are to all intents and purposes called Flash.
Here’s Nick Ames’ report from Bodø on the “big dream” coming true for the Norwegian side:
No one is sure precisely when the “coffee table” tradition began, but consensus traces it back about 60 years. It would take a lot for one of the regulars not to show up. The time is almost 11am and cups are being laid out in the Aspmyra Stadion canteen for the Bodø/Glimt old boys’ daily catchup. In walks Ivar Bakke, who can count himself as the group’s elder statesman at 94. “One of the oldest people in Norway!” he laughs before sitting down. Tall tales are retold, memories sharpened in delighting over past and more recent glories; however far those stretch, everyone here knows what it has taken to bring their club to the barely fathomable territory of a Europa League semi-final.
The raconteur in chief is Jacob Klette, a sharp figure in his late 70s who made almost 400 appearances for a team that broke boundaries. “The northern part of Norway has always had to fight for its rights,” Klette says. “I played for Lyn, the best team in Oslo, in the late 1960s. You would open the newspaper and see adverts: ‘We have an apartment for rent, but not for people from the north.’ You felt disgusted to see it.”
Klette and many of his friends at the table would turn convention and outright prejudice on their head. Clubs from all the way up here, 75 miles inside the Arctic circle, were not allowed to play in the Norwegian cup until 1963. They were regarded as poor relations on and off the pitch.
Much more here:
They certainly seem to be a very cheerful bunch. Bonus points for the team wearing equally cheerful colours. Bodo/Glimt should be given a bonus goal for engendering scenes like this.
Lucas Bergvall has twisted an ankle and is out of the game. Richarlison and Dominic Solanke start a game together for the first time ever.
The teams!
Glenn Hoddle says he’s “excited” and thinks Spurs should “put the tie to bed” this evening. Have Spurs named the team to do it? Let’s find out!
Tottenham Hotspur: Vicario, Porro, Romero, Van de Ven, Udogie, Bentancur, Bissouma, Maddison, Johnson, Solanke, Richarlison. Subs: Austin, Whiteman, Danso, Tel, Gray, Kulusevski, Spence, Odobert, Sarr, Davies, Moore.
Bodo/Glimt: Haikin, Sjovold, Gundersen, Nielsen, Bjorkan, Fet, Hauge, Saltnes, Maatta, Hogh, Blomberg. Subs: Lund, Brondbo, Auklend, Moe, Sorli, Bro Hansen, Kjaer, Bjortuft.
Referee: Jose Maria Sanchez (Spain).
Hello world!
The miracle of Bodo/Glimt might become the story of the 2024-25 season in European competition (well, that and some 17-year-old in Spain). It’s just a marvelous, splendid thing, bright, luminous and warming as the city’s summer sun (which from the last day of this month until 13 July won’t bother setting at all; at the other end of the scale on 20 December it is due to rise at 11.35am and set again 49 minutes later. Admittedly calling it warming might be going a bit far – temperatures normally dip into single digits most days even in high summer).
The population of Bodo is around 55,000, and the Guardian has dispatched Nick Ames to the town (more from him shortly), perhaps to see if he can find anyone yet to be interviewed about the club’s recent success. It is potentially transformative: In the build-up to this game the Reuters news agency spoke Troels Sandreid, who runs the airport in Bodo, to see what kind of impact it was having on visitor numbers. “Bodo/Glimt‘s journey in Europe has undoubtedly helped increase interest in Bodo, including traffic to and from the airport,” he said. “Avinor [the company that runs the airport] has seen a steady rise in passenger numbers at Bodo Airport in recent years. Although it’s difficult to isolate the cause, it’s natural to imagine that Bodo/Glimt‘s success is a contributing factor.”
Well, that and the fact it takes 17 hours to drive there from the nearest big city, I imagine.
This is what Bodo looks like. Frankly it looks magnificent, though I appreciate this was taken on a good day. I like that it has attractions such as the Bodøsjøen Friluftsmuseum, whose name suggests there is such a severe local shortage of spaces that sometimes three or four words are having to share each one.
Inevitably, given that the town is home to the Norsk Luftfartsmuseum (the national museum of aviation), a former pilot had a significant hand in Bodo/Glimt’s emergence. Here’s the Associated Press:
How did an unheralded Norwegian team from a tiny town north of the Arctic Circle become one of the fairy-tale stories of European soccer?
For Bodø/Glimt, the transformation has been underpinned by a fighter pilot who developed mental techniques for his squadron before bombing missions in Libya.
Bjørn Mannsverk discovered a group of players exuding negative energy and prone to “a collective mental breakdown” when he was asked in early 2017 to join the backroom staff of a team that had just been relegated to Norway’s second tier.
His task as “mental coach” at Bodø/Glimt? To make players talk openly about their feelings, lower stress levels, change their attitudes and routines about things like preparation and nutrition, and remove the stigma around mental training.
Winning or losing no longer mattered. It was all about following a philosophy and culture established by Mannsverk, a former Royal Norwegian air force squadron leader whose military duties took him to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and to Libya for a NATO-led intervention in 2011.
The results have been extraordinary.
After securing an immediate return to Norway’s top division, the team — based more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) north of Oslo in a fishing town, Bodø, with a population of around 55,000 — has captured four of the country’s last five league titles.
An active air force pilot for more than 20 years, Mannsverk and others in his squadron were the subjects of a mental training project in 2010 where the focus was on meditation and “every day repeating boring stuff, but with 100% attention.”
It meant that when he was in Libya the following year, he had the mental capacity to handle the dangerous missions he was asked to perform. His squadron’s mantra — “train as you intend to fight” — worked.
“Even though I got strong feelings when my first bombs hit the target and it was in infernal flames and fragments and everything,” he said, “it was like, ’My training said that it’s OK, this is happening, recognize that, but know I have to return and do my job.’”
With Bodø until recently having a NATO air base, it was simply a happy coincidence that Bodø/Glimt’s leadership came across members of the squadron at the same time as it was seeking a “silver bullet” — as Mannsverk put it — to improve the team’s mental conditioning.
A project was born and fully embraced by manager Kjetil Knutsen following his appointment in 2018.
Bodø/Glimt has never looked back.
