Editor's note: On Tuesday, Norwegian minnows Bodo/Glimt pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Champions League history by eliminating last season's finalists, Inter Milan. But the roots of that success can be traced back to their Europa League run last season. This story first ran in May 2025, before Bodo/Glimt faced Tottenham Hotspur in the semifinal.
Bodo/Glimt, European football's biggest underdogs, meditate before training, huddle around for a chat when they concede a goal and decide amongst the squad who should be captain for each game. Their core principle is that they won't ever talk about winning or look at a league table. There is not a single clichéd comment uttered about needing to pick up three points.
Those techniques are just a small part of explaining why a tiny team from Norway, so far north they're in the Arctic Circle, are facing Tottenham Hotspur on Thursday in the UEFA Europa League semifinals, just a couple of games from lifting a European trophy and winning a place in next season's UEFA Champions League.
Nobody in the town of Bodo needs to be told that this is a David vs. Goliath story. They know that you could fit the entire town's population (42,831) into the Spurs' stadium and still have 22,000 empty seats, and that their annual transfer budget is the same as a Spurs player could expect to earn in a season. They know they're still not quite on the map of European football, that their opponents this season will all check to see where they are travelling to: they'll scan their finger north, then further north, until they find a place that is a 16-hour drive from Oslo where daily sunlight lasts for just 56 minutes in December and nearly 24 hours in July.
And yet, nobody at Bodo/Glimt is surprised to have gotten this far. Maybe this is not really an underdog story at all. Bodo/Glimt won their first Norwegian league title in 2020. They've now won it in four of the past five seasons. In that time they've made it to the knockout rounds of European football and taken down some huge clubs including AS Roma, Celtic and Besiktas.
This season, they beat FC Porto in the league phase before running Manchester United close. In their last game, the quarterfinals, they knocked out Lazio across two legs, the first of which was played amid deep Arctic snow. The idea of adding Tottenham to that list of victims, then, seems manageable, even if it remains a little unlikely.
There are a number of reasons why the club has reached the final four. It has a lot to do with a golden generation of players coming through their youth ranks, such as Jens Hauge and Patrick Berg, who graduated to the first team just before their first title win in 2020. It is partly because of the icy conditions that any travelling European side meets, as well as being confronted by an acclimated squad made up almost entirely of players who come from northern Norway, many from Bodo itself. It is also due to an attractive style of play instilled by a coaching staff spearheaded by manager Kjetil Knutsen, now linked with jobs in the Premier League.
But any story about Bodo/Glimt's emergence usually begins in 2017, with relegation to the Norwegian second division, and the arrival of a Norwegian fighter pilot named Bjørn Mannsverk.
It was eight years ago that Mannsverk arrived at the club, having recently given up active tours of duty that included missions over Afghanistan and Libya. A colleague in his squadron had spoken to someone at Bodo/Glimt and wondered if he could help. It was in the months after they had been relegated, and the club's front office was adamant that their players were good enough, but that it was a mental collapse at the end of the season that had cost them. So they invited Mannsverk, a man who had little interest in football, and asked if he would work with the players. He agreed.
"Bjørn has brainwashed us now for six years now," Ørjan Berg, who once played for the club and now works in its youth department, told ESPN. His son, Patrick, is the club's official captain.
Mannsverk would only work with the club on two conditions: players would have to see him voluntarily -- he would not speak to anyone that was told to see him -- and he would not be their agent. "I said I won't go out and push decisions on the players in favor of the club [like signing a new contract or adopting a style in training]," Mannsverk told ESPN. "I will be there for the player."
Mannsverk, who was not being paid and later said it was more like a "hobby" at first, also had a question for the bosses. "What if a player tells me they do not want to play football anymore?" he asked. "What if they want to leave the club? I will support them in those decisions. Are you ready for that risk?"
It's a big danger for a club to take on a man they do not even pay. Yet, they jumped on board, sensing it might help. It did not take long before that fear became a reality.
One of the first players through Mannsverk's door was midfielder Ulrik Saltnes. "A super clever player," Mannsverk said. "Great in training, s----y in matches." Saltnes was struggling with stomach issues during matches that would cause diarrhea. It limited him to being able to play just half a game at a time and once ruled him out of training for a week. Club medical staff performed any tests they could and found nothing. Saltnes was sure it must be a mental issue. Maybe Mannsverk could help, he thought.
"He said, I'm so tired of failing when it comes to playing games, and I'm so tired of being in pain," Mannsverk said, adding that Saltnes revealed he planned to quit football in the coming months and begin his university studies.
"I said, 'Okay, that's good,'" Mannsverk said. "We started to discuss: 'Why do you love football? This is your dream, but now you are leaving?'"
