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On Wednesday evening, Inter lost 3-1 at Bodø/Glimt in the first leg of the Champions League playoffs, making things very difficult for them to qualify for the round of 16. Bodø/Glimt comes from the Norwegian town of Bodø (Glimt means lightning), around 42 thousand inhabitants and above all 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. It is the most northerly place where the Champions League has ever been played, and even for the strongest teams in Europe it is a complicated trip for logistical, climatic and footballing reasons. A month ago Manchester City lost 3-1. In November, Juventus managed to win 3-2 in the final minutes, after having been behind for a long time.
In recent years Bodø/Glimt has been a regular presence in European tournaments. The first time he became known in Italy was in 2020, when in the Europa League preliminaries he played against Milan at San Siro: he lost 3-2, but stood out for his ambitious style of play. After that match, Milan decided to buy Jens Petter Hauge from Bodø/Glimt, a striker who returned to play in Norway two years ago, and yesterday scored an excellent goal against Inter.
Since then, Bodø/Glimt has played twice in the Conference League, twice in the Europa League and this year made its debut in the Champions League, managing to qualify for the playoffs thanks to the victory against Manchester City in the first phase. In total he played 27 home games, winning 17: that’s a lot, considering that he almost always faced richer and better equipped teams.
If we also look at the qualifying phases of the tournaments, which are played in the summer against often unknown teams, Bodø/Glimt have reached 34 victories in 43 European matches played at home, a quite exceptional figure. In October 2021 Roma, coached by José Mourinho, lost 6-1. Last season they eliminated Lazio in the Europa League quarter-finals.
(Danilo Di Giovanni/Getty Images)
Playing in the small stadium of Bodø/Glimt, 8 thousand seats, is difficult. Predictably, it’s cold: Inter played at around 7 degrees below zero, and with a freezing wind that made the perceived temperature even lower. It had snowed until the day before. Furthermore, the pitch is not natural grass, but synthetic (again for reasons related to the cold). In Europe very few stadiums have synthetic pitches, and teams are therefore not used to playing on them. The ball flows and bounces differently, and even running and changing direction is not quite the same, and this makes it easier for teams like Bodø/Glimt who always play it, and know it better.
However, it is not just the cold and synthetic grass that make it difficult to face Bodø/Glimt, especially away from home. In fact, it is a team that plays aggressively, on the attack, with a lot of pressing and quick counterattacks. Until less than ten years ago he had never won a championship and was playing in the Norwegian second division. In just a few years, thanks above all to the work of Kjetil Knutsen and the management, it has become the best team in Norway. Since 2019 she has won the championship 4 times, and finished second 2 more.
There are various in-depth articles, Italian and international, which tell how Knutsen has radically changed the team’s way of training and playing, focusing first and foremost on intensity. The combination of this intensity and the climate of the Arctic Circle makes home games at Bodø/Glimt physically exhausting even for the best European teams. In the meantime, the management has built a system that allows it to bring almost all the best Norwegian talents to Bodø, also aiming for a certain tactical and sporting continuity: Knutsen has been the coach since 2018.
