Patrick Berg, Fredrik Bjorkan and Jens Petter Hauge were all key contributors to Bodø/Glimt’s remarkable 2025/26 UEFA Champions League campaign, where the Norwegian side produced a standout run to the knockout stages.
During their European campaign, Superlaget recorded league-phase wins over Atletico Madrid and Manchester City, and went on to eliminate Inter Milan in the knockout phase play-offs, before falling in the last 16 to Sporting CP after a 3-0 home win was overturned by a 5-0 extra-time defeat in Lisbon.
All three players featured prominently throughout that run and now also form part of the squad preparing to in the Round of 16 at .
Located north of the Arctic Circle, the city of Bodø has a population of about 53,000. The Aspmyra Stadion holds only about 8,000 spectators, and the club operates with limited resources.
Thiago Martins, a former Bodø/Glimt player and current club youth academy coach, who originally hails from Brazil, told FIFA that the approach to football in Norway is different to his country of birth.
"The city of Bodø is very small; the players are very well known," he explained. "As for football culture, they don’t play in the streets here. The country is too cold. Often, it is the parents themselves who coach their five- and six-year-old children, until the academies eventually discover them."
Indeed, family influence plays a significant role at both the club and in the national team. That is the case with left-back Bjorkan, son of Aasmund Bjorkan, a former Bodø/Glimt player. It is a similar story for captain Berg, whose uncle Runar Berg, father Orjan Berg and grandfather Harald Berg all played for Bodø and Norway.
The list of players with ties to Bodø/Glimt could have been even longer, but the club chose not to retain Andreas Schjelderup, a product of their academy, who left for Portugal at 18. During a pivotal moment for the youth system, the board allowed the winger to move abroad. Now 22, he plays for Benfica and came off the bench in Norway's in the Round of 32.
"I coached Andreas here at Bodø; we worked on finishing techniques, on how to score goals. I remember we had a final meeting to decide if he would be brought into the first team, but there was no consensus. Later, he went to Portugal and became a very good player," Martins recalled.
Martins, now 49, has long been associated with Bodø/Glimt. As a forward, he played for the club between 2007 and 2010, scoring 34 goals and helping the team to promotion to the First Division in 2006/07. He made the kind of impact that inspired local fans to sing songs about him.
Born in São Paulo, Martins moved to the United States while still very young and faced several hardships, including, at one point, sleeping on the streets. One day, while sleeping on a beach in California, he was invited to play football by a group of Mexicans. After performing well, he was invited to compete in amateur tournaments.
From there, Martins started to stand out and was discovered by university football scouts, eventually attending two institutions in Santa Barbara on scholarships. In 2001, he made it to Major League Soccer, playing five full seasons. In 2003, he spent a season at D.C. United alongside the iconic , from whom he heard great stories about Romario and Barcelona. Eventually, in 2006, the Brazilian headed to Norway.
After stepping back from the pitch, Martins held various jobs until returning to football in 2021, when he began working in the club's youth academy.
In an interview with Eurosport a few years ago, Martins spoke about the “perfect life” in Norway, one of the countries with the highest Human Development Index in the world. "I think we, in Norway, live in Disneyland. Let's be honest. Norway is the easiest country to raise a family and a child," he said.
Sources: FIFA Official
