The Champions League badly needed Bodo/Glimt’s shock success – but it highlights a big problem | OneFootball

After the San Siro had been silenced, long before the end, Bodo/Glimt’s Jens Petter Hauge had a fittingly suitable summation of it all.

“It sounds not true,” the forward beamed. He was of course talking about their 5-2 aggregate victory over Inter Milan in the Champions League, but you can extend it to the whole story, which manager Kjetil Knutsen touched upon.

“Can you believe it, a small team from the north?”

If constant references to Bodo’s size amid so many European victories may counter-productively make the club’s progress feel less immense, and more routine, it is really anything but. It is historic.

Bodo/Glimt’s qualification for the Champions League last 16 is probably the greatest feat of overperformance at European club level since Jose Mourinho’s Porto won the competition in 2004. Maybe even greater.

There were so many different individual elements to this that just kept increasing the odds, to the point the entire journey here should have been close to impossible.

open image in gallery

Bodo/Glimt celebrated a historic night at the San Siro (AP)

open image in gallery

Inter Milan were left bereft after the stunning result (AP)

There is first of all that population of 53,000, which plays into the immense economic gap. A scathing Italian media were reporting a chasm in squad values of €57m against €666m, and that from a starting budget for this Bodo/Glimt hierarchy of €4m in 2018, when they barely survived relegation.

That gap was obviously a factor in the club initially looking like the also-rans they should be when they still hadn’t won a Champions League game after their first six league phase matches as the calendar flipped to 2026. Such a prospect looked even less likely when you glanced at their remaining fixture list, which involved matches against Manchester City and Atletico Madrid.

And yet Bodo got through those to meet last season’s finalists Inter, but faced an even greater challenge that, by then, they were deep into their offseason.

That should have diminished the advantage of home games in the Arctic Circle, but there was another twist. Sun actually helped them as a series of trips to Spain kept them fit, and fresh.

open image in gallery

Hakon Evjen scored to put Bodo in control (AP)

That still shouldn’t have been enough to beat Inter by an incredible 5-2 on aggregate of course. By the same token, a lot of debates are now going to be had about the state of Serie A – especially as the competition faces up to the prospect of no teams in the last 16 – but it still shouldn’t have sunk low enough for a club of such limited resources to rise so high.

You wouldn’t have sensed any of these impediments, though, as Hakon Evjen so confidently swept in that crescendo of a fifth goal.

“It sounds not true,” indeed.

There are of course all sorts of lessons that can be taken from the Bodo/Glimt victory, especially as Hauge spoke about being “so proud of the group, the medical staff, we are all in this together”.

Unlike so many other upstarts over the years, the club’s success hasn’t yet seen them been terminally asset-stripped in the way even a historic giant like Ajax have. Even those players that briefly went away, like Hauge, returned. Some put that down to the distinctiveness of this team. They do keep regenerating, and growing.

open image in gallery

Jens Petter Hauge believes the results sounds “not true” (REUTERS)

It does make you think what might be possible in European football if there was a touch more regulation and restriction on the constant flood of money and talent to the wealthiest clubs.

And that is also where there is a wider lesson for the game, beyond how Bodo/Glimt have managed this. The comparison has already been made with Porto but there is perhaps a much more relevant element of Leicester City about it.

For that famous 5,000-1 shot, read Bodo’s 1 per cent chance of qualification. Just like Leicester, too, this stood out more because it was so unlikely it actually shows the problem with the system.

It is almost the paradox of such moments. The same reasons they are rightly celebrated are also significant cause for concern.

Feats like this shouldn’t be this unlikely. Norwegian rivals Rosenborg got to this stage of the Champions League in 1999-2000 and before that the quarter-finals in 1996-97. The earlier achievement even saw them beat a much better AC Milan than this Inter, at the same San Siro.

Rosenborg’s feat was a sensation in 1996-97. This is something else. It was badly needed.

open image in gallery

Rosenborg mixed it with Real Madrid during their run in the 1999-2000 Champions League (Getty Images)

For the truth of that, you only have to look at the rest of the Champions League. There are six Premier League clubs in the last 16, a lamentable proportion that may well continue next season. This comes as a lot of the other super clubs experience difficulties, and it feels like the best chance for anyone else to win it is the English sides exhausting each other.

Immense wealth is inevitably winning.

And without wishing to add a sour note to Bodo/Glimt’s own sensation, it’s hard not to feel that this may end in a similar manner to the 2002 World Cup; where the upstarts eventually run out of steam in relatively flat eliminations, most likely to an English club.

This also comes as Uefa, European Football Clubs and their joint UC3 venture crow about the financial success of the Champions League, without apparently understanding what has historically made the continental game work. It is variety, not the same rich clubs again and again.

It is not six clubs from one country going so deep into the competition. That’s not what European football is supposed to be about. It is supposed to be about feats like Bodo’s, but they are now so rare as to be truly precious.

open image in gallery

English teams have dominated the Champions League this season (Getty)

Some stakeholders will point to this as the system working but it is like pointing to a cold day as evidence against climate change.

The greater question is whether anyone at the top of European football is actually thinking about this? Do they have a vision for what the Champions League should look like, how more Bodo/Glimts can be nurtured? All of the institutional forces are going in the other direction.

For the moment, the Norwegian side are only going one way. Bodo certainly had a vision and can now see so much more in front of them. That is to be treasured, but partly because it’s so much rarer than it should be.