Icon: enlarge
The FK Bodø / Glimt team: The next goal is the Champions League group stage
Photo:
FREDRIK VARFJELL / AFP
For the first time in their 104-year club history, FK Bodø / Glimt are Norwegian football champions.
With a 2-1 win at Strömsgodset, the Northern Norwegian team secured the championship early on Sunday evening, a draw would have been enough.
Five game days before the end of the season, the club is 18 points ahead of the top of the table in the Elite Series - even though it has so far been known as an elevator team in the Scandinavian country.
The club from Bodø, a fjord town north of the Arctic Circle, was most recently promoted to the elite series in 2017, after having switched between the first and second division several times.
In 2019 they came in surprisingly second, so now the title.
Tactical blogs praise the low-budget club that replaced the two top clubs in the league, Rosenborg and Molde, after six years in terms of title wins.
With the title, the club also replaces Iceland's KA Akureyri (1989) as the geographically northernmost team that has ever won a national championship.
Quarantine party on the balcony
Captain Patrick Berg and central defender Marius Lode celebrated the title on the hotel balcony.
The duo was still in quarantine after the corona case in the Norwegian national soccer team.
The rest of the team that drove up just before midnight danced down on the street, some of them bare-chested despite the low temperatures.
After 25 encounters with only one defeat, the team is now on the league record for both the number of points and the goals scored.
Last year's champion Molde FK, the former club of BVB star Erling Haaland, is currently in second place in the table, traditional club Rosenborg Trondheim in fourth.
Bodø's sporting director Aasmund Bjørkan had specified the Champions League group stage as the goal for next year.
Icon: The mirror
ngo / dpa / sid