Around the Leagues #1 - Norwegian Eliteserian (whose best players usually move away as the beer in Norway is so fucking expensive!)
Running my little football prediction contest as I have for over 300 episodes now, and claiming to be a huge football fan, I felt a little guilty that I didn't know too much about some of the lesser-known leagues and with the English Premier League having finished for the season I've been using games in the Nordic leagues recently and so thought I better learn a little more...
In this first post, I'm going to be taking a look at the Norwegian Eliteserian which is the top division in Norway, along with a few of the teams and hopefully finding one to follow!
Obviously, I have got all this information from various sources on the internet which I will list at the end of the post! Also, apologies to @pusen for anglicising some words as my keyboard is in UK English and I'm not clever enough to do the double dots over the 'o' thing or stick an 'A' and 'E' together!
The league actually started back in 1937, before that, there were various regional leagues and a national cup competition but all this changed with the forming of 11 groups from 8 districts. The war got in the way of the complete reorganisation but finally, in 1948 the Hovedserien was formed which brought together the 16 top club from the regional leagues into two groups of 8 with the group winners playing an end of season, two-legged final to decide the champions.
This is how it remained until 1961-62 season when all the 16 teams were put in one league together and during the transition, the season actually ran for 15 months and is well known (not to me until now!) as the Marathon Season (Maratonserien). This was eventually won by a no doubt knackered Brann! Yes, the same Brann who are currently sitting bottom with 0 wins from 6 games!
So, in 1963, the new season kicked off with just 10 teams and the league was simply named Division 1 (1.divisjon) and was again won by the Brann. Yes, still the same Brann who are currently......etc etc etc . The league was expanded to 12 teams in 1972 because before that, teams from Northern Norway weren't allowed to be promoted into the top league.
Now I can't really work out why that is so I will be calling on my mate @pusen to try and fill in the details here. I do have a couple of theories, one slightly more believable than the other. Either A. Northern Norwegian teams are cheating fuckers and/or far too good for the soft Southerners or B. Perhaps it is far too cold up there and games had to regularly be rearranged due to the weather and people preferring to watch the Northern Lights to a football game. I look forward to finding out the truth!
FK Mjølnerwere the first of the Northerners to join the top table and even until 1979, getting promoted was more difficult than it was for the more Southerly teams.
Anyway, in 1990, due to sponsorship, the league was renamed Tippeligaen due to a sponsorship deal with Norse Tipping, the government's state lottery company but the pesky fans still kept calling it Division 1 so they decided to rename Division 2 as Division 1 from 1991. Rosenberg (RBK) won in 1990 followed by Viking in 1991 but then Rosenberg hit back and went on to notch up 13 straight title wins.
In 1992, the league turned fully professional, 1995 the league was expanded to 14 sides and again to 16 sides in 2009. In 2016, the league was renamed to its current Eliteserien.
The season runs from the beginning of April until the end of November as outside this period, its far too cold and there are more frozen and snow-covered pitches than playable ones!
The bottom two teams are relegated down to Division 1 and the team in 14th place must play off against the team in 3rd place in the first Division to decide the 3rd team to be promoted and relegated.
Famous Norweigian Players
There have been a few, but the most important one by far was Alf Ing Haaland who was a top-class defender who played for Leeds between 1997 and 2000 and made 74 league appearances and scored 8 goals before we sadly went bankrupt and had to sell him to Manchester City.
Image 'borrowed' from a reddit user who obviously 'borrowed' it from somewhere else. I at least did a screenshot and edit to try and make it look 'less borrowed'!
We loved Alfie at Leeds. He wore the number 4 while Batty was away messing around with Blackburn and Newcastle and gave it his all with his hard, no-nonsense style that we adore at Leeds. The feud between him and Roy Keane is famous but it's this quote;-
"I really dislike (Manchester) United and I can't stand their players".
That will cement his place as a Leeds legend for ever.
Other famous Norwegian players are Henning Berg, Steffan Iverson, Stefan Johansen, Ronny Delia, Tore André Flo and some twat called Olé.
Hang on Nathen, aren't you forgetting Erling Haaland?
Absolutely not. I'll explain why. Erling is not Norwegian. What happened was, on the 21st October 1999 Leeds played Lokomotiv Moscow in the UEFA Cup and despite him being an unused sub in that game, after Leeds won 4-1 at home (they won the second leg 3-0) in Moscow!) him and his wife, the lovely Mrs Haaland had a celebratory shag with the result being that young Erling Haaland was born in Leeds 9 months later on the 21st of July 2000.
This actually makes Erling's nationality officially Yorkshire and not Norwegian and as such he will return one day to Leeds to score a million goals for us!
"The dream is to win the Premier League with Leeds."
Erling Haaland Afterposten 2019
Norway's clubs have a very long tradition and despite them only turning professional in the last 30 years, many of the clubs were established at the very beginning of the 20th century and a few even further back. The oldest club is actually Odds BK from Skien who were formed in 1894!
The international team for me were always a strong, tough team and a bit of a bogey team for the more glamourous sides but they sadly seem to have lost their way a little in recent years and didn't qualify for this year's Euro 2020 tournament which kicks off on June 11th.
So that's it. A little run down of Norway's Eliteserien! I wonder who Norwegians will be supporting at the Euros?
Marching On Together
www.soccertimes.com/leagues/norway-eliteserien
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/
www.uefa.com
Great write up!
If I remember correctly teams from up north weren't able to join the league due to travel distances and because the teams simply weren't considered good. They were afraid that the teams from up North would be pummeled.
You could also include John Arne Riise, John Carew and Morten Gamst Pedersen on that list of yours. And others I can't think of right now.
Another historical player that's important to know about is Roald "Kniksen" Jensen. An absolutely legendary player who played for Brann and had a minor period in the Scottish league. He's considered to be one of the best players ever in the Norwegian league and even has an award called the Kniksen Award (Kniksenprisen) names after him. Erling Braut won one of those in 2020 I think. Sander Berge has won at least one as well. I think Ronny Deila won one after he startet coaching as well.
I genuinely meant to put John Arne Risse in there as he was a staple in my 'Dreamteams' for years when he was at Liverpool. Top-class defender.
The thing about the Northern teams was although it was mentioned in many articles I read today, not one of them, including Wikipedia even suggested a reason why they weren't allowed to be promoted!
I shall now go and read your links and leave you in peace! Cheers mate. I think my team will be Brann as like Leeds, they've had some great times but appear to be a little down on their luck at the moment. Everyone loves an underdog!
You need to write more as this was really interesting.
Thanks. I will be writing more on here in the future as I've not much to say on my main blog! Nothing much to do and we can't go anywhere here!
Hope you're well and things are recovering down there.
Very interesting article indeed. No doubt this league doesn't get as much attention as other soccer leagues, maybe because its soccer doesn't stand out much.
Possibly so but I'm going to take a closer look at Finland next and they regularly play at the major competitions despite them not having any particular stand-out players and a rather small domestic league!
Wow, this is my first time of hearing about this league and thanks for sharing atleast I have gotten something from it. Keep it up @leedsunited.
Nice one. Sport is so much fun