“Maggie Thatcher, can you hear me?”
In , the cry of Bjorge Lillelien, a football commentator with state broadcaster NRK, is legendary. It is known by many older English football fans too. It dates from the day that Norway’s footballers first beat England – a 2-1 success in a qualifier in Oslo on 9 September 1981.
Lillelien did not limit himself to Thatcher, then British prime minister, in a colourful piece of commentary that invoked figures from Britain’s present and past. “Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana” ran his list. Amid the exuberant utterances in Norwegian, he then delivered his pay-off in perfect English: “Your boys took a hell of a beating!” The excitement surrounding that first victory over England has not been forgotten by Jan Aage Fjortoft, the former Norway striker-turned-broadcaster. He was 14 at the time and says: “For us to see these top players coming to Norway was a big thing but there was nobody thinking of us actually winning that game.” After all, Norway were set for bottom place in the qualifying group and England for the finals in Spain. Yet the goals that Roger Albertsen and Hallvar Thoresen put past England goalkeeper Ray Clemence held such meaning because of the near-reverential status in which English football was held in Norway.
England had been the lodestar for Norwegian football fans since 1969, the year that NRK began transmitting English top-flight games every Saturday afternoon. “Four o'clock in Norway every Saturday was like a holy time for us,” remembers Fjortoft. “I guess you could say we were influenced by English football because that's what we saw all the time,” he continues. “This was a time when there wasn’t much on TV, not like today, so everyone Norwegian will have a favourite team from England. And of course, our game was measured on how they played in England with a number nine – [get the ball] up, back to the midfield, chip it over the back four and then we storm into there and get crosses in.”
Arguably no Norwegian was more influenced by the English game than Egil Olsen, Fjortoft’s coach with the Norway national team in the 1990s. “He was unbelievably influenced by English football through watching games, through going on study trips there,” affirms Fjortoft, who cites the example of Olsen’s relationship with Charles Reep, an English pioneer of using data for performance analysis.
An accountant by profession, Reep had begun compiling match statistics in the 1930s. By the early ’50s he was helping Wolverhampton Wanderers manager Stan Cullis win the English First Division title. The conclusions of Reep – later an adviser to the English FA – included that seven out of nine goals came from moves of three passes or less, and that most goals came from winning the ball back in the attacking quarter of the pitch.
Olsen, as a professor at the Norwegian University of Sports Science, had his own interest in match statistics and began corresponding with Reep in the 1970s. By the time he coached Norway, his approach combined a zonal defence with some of Reep’s attacking principles: "It's called 'direct football' but it is simply an attacking style,” he once explained. “We push the ball forwards at all times, quickly."
“We were not a passing team,” adds Fjortoft yet their effectiveness paid off on the next occasion they faced England in World Cup qualifying ahead of USA 1994. “The last time we’d qualified for the World Cup was 1938 so we had no expectations. We had quite a good group of players but none of us believed we’d have a chance to qualify as we grew up thinking we always end up last in the qualification group. So when we saw that group, we were just thinking, "Well okay, we'll get to play at Wembley.” But our national coach said, ‘There’s a chance’."
So it proved. They had already drawn 1-1 at Wembley when they hosted England in the return qualifier in Oslo on 2 June 1993. For that occasion, Reep was flown over to Oslo as a guest of honour of the Norwegian FA. He looked on as Olsen’s team beat the England of Graham Taylor – another manager Reep had advised – through goals from Oyvind Leonhardsen and Lars Bohinen. As a result, Norway, with Fjortoft wearing the No9 shirt, would progress to the 1994 tournament alongside the Netherlands, with England stuck at home. It marked the start of a golden period.
Four years later, Norway returned to the world stage at France 1998. In between, meanwhile, Fjortoft was part of a group of Norwegians who made their mark on the Premier League, in his case with Swindon Town, Middlesbrough and Barnsley. The decade ended, he notes, with his international colleagues Ronny Johnsen, Henning Berg and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer “winning the treble for Manchester United” in 1999.
As Norway prepare to meet England again, much has changed in the intervening years – not least the arrival of a bona fide Norwegian superstar in , son of Fjortoft’s USA 1994 team-mate Alf-Inge. Yet one thing remains the same: the nation’s love of English football. Fjortoft travels regularly to England in his role as a broadcaster and sees “loads of Norwegians going over to the games. I think the respect for English football, the respect for English football culture is enormous in Norway.”
What is certainly different is the style of this Norway team. Coach Stale Solkbakken, Fjortoft’s former team-mate, has instilled a more technical approach than Olsen all those years ago. Fjortoft explains: “He's managed to create his own philosophy: ‘This is how Norway play.’ He’s made them believe in this. We played Brazil and had over 60 per cent possession. I mean, that’s unbelievable.” Solbakken has also revived the spirit of old, helped by building strong relationships with Arsenal’s Martin Ødegaard, his captain from early on in his reign, and Manchester City’s Haaland, his star striker. Fjortoft elaborates: “A couple of years ago I went into the camp and we did a documentary on Erling and I was supposed to interview Sander Berge, Martin Ødegaard and Erling Haaland. And after that I called a friend and said, ‘This is unbelievable. They have the same atmosphere we had.' They’re top, top players in their clubs but they loved being together.
“This team spirit is sensational,” he reiterates, “and I think that is our biggest strength up there with Erling and Martin.”
And so to in Miami. Can they beat England for only the third time in 13 meetings? Whatever the outcome, unlike in 1981 and 1993, it would hardly constitute a shock if England took a beating this time, attests Fjortoft. “I think we are equal – I think this is a 50/50 game.”
Sources: FIFA Official
