NYON, Switzerland (AP) — Bodø/Glimt is a feelgood soccer story for the ages just as the divisive and cash-driven Super League project finally ended this month. The timing seems richly ironic.
At the Champions League draw on Friday, Manchester City’s potential opponents in the round-of-16 bracket were two teams representing wildly different visions of European soccer.
Bodø/Glimt, the homely and humble club from a small Norwegian fishing town, or Real Madrid, the aristocrat which drove the Super League toward trying to destroy the Champions League.
“For modern football I think it’s important that a club like ours are a bigger part of this,” Bodø/Glimt chief executive Frode Thomassen told the Associated Press at UEFA headquarters after his club was paired with Sporting Lisbon.
Man City had earlier been given its other option, two games in back-to-back midweeks against Real Madrid. For the fifth straight season. Facing each other for the 12th and 13th times in the Champions League in just over six years.
This is the kind of regular fixture Madrid, Man City and the other 10 storied members of Super League wanted when plotting their breakaway from UEFA in April 2021.
In April 2021, Bodø/Glimt was nowhere near being invited to the Super League and had never even played in the European Cup or Champions League.
The Super League collapsed within 48 hours amid a backlash from fans and lawmakers, especially in England.
Five years on, Bodø/Glimt is a Champions League standout reeling off four straight wins in five weeks against wealthy Super League founders: Man City, Atletico Madrid and Inter Milan, twice. Since winning on Tuesday at San Siro, Bodø/Glimt’s followers on Instagram doubled to more than 400,000.
“We deserve to be here now,” Thomassen said. “It’s not always about money, it’s about the people and what kind of effort you put into it. To be able every year to take new steps.”
Bodø/Glimt’s Champions League debut was in July 2021 in the unglamorous first qualifying round. The first-time champion of Norway lost to Legia Warsaw 3-2 at its tiny Aspmyra Stadium, and then 2-0 in Poland.
It was the start of a magical European run. Bodø/Glimt switched to qualifying rounds of the inaugural Europa Conference League, and 18 games later lost to José Mourinho’s Roma in the quarterfinals.
In 2022 and in 2024, Bodø/Glimt lost in the Champions League playoffs round in August. Last season, a switch to the Europa League ended in the semifinals against Tottenham.
Last August, Bodø/Glimt cracked the code. Another Norwegian title lifted the team direct to the qualifying playoffs where Sturm Graz was easily beaten.
The elite stage beckoned after steady progress under Thomassen and coach Kjetil Knutsen, who both joined Bodø/Glimt in 2017, and a loyal group of staff.
Thomassen laughs at comparisons with Leicester’s English Premier League title in 2016, as close to a miracle as any in modern sports.
“Leicester and those clubs had a lot bigger organization than we have,” he said, reflecting on his club nine years ago. “We were just 40 people employed in the company and that was including players. We had a 4.2 million euros ($5 million) budget in total.
“There’s a lot of people who have been on the journey with us. We are a small group of people but it’s a lot of heart and passion for the game and the work that they do.
“It’s the same as family,” Thomassen said. “For some people a hug is just a hug. When you see our players hug, and they meet every day, it is like a relationship built on respect and, in a way, love.”
The team-first ethic of mostly Norwegian and Danish players, he believes, helped the team grow after “we struggled a little bit” starting the Champions League with no wins, three draws and three losses through December.
“We often see that the other team has individual elements in their play, some of them at a high, high level,” Thomassen said. “We are more of a team, a solid team.”
UEFA prize money is starting to pile up: More than 26 million euros ($30 million) last season, and now approaching the kind of 61 million euros ($72 million) total Club Brugge earned last season when reaching the Champions League round of 16.
Beating Sporting will mean a 12.5 million euros ($14.8 million) bonus from UEFA for the quarterfinals against Arsenal or Bayer Leverkusen.
“It’s a not always about money, it’s about the people and what kind of effort you put into it,” Thomassen said. “That’s one of our main ideas — to be grounded.”
Still, a new stadium, the 10,000-seat Arctic Arena, is being built on the edge of town.
“For the game of football it’s kind of beautiful,” Thomassen said, “that a club like ours can be among the 16 last clubs left in the Champions League.”
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