The Glimt of reality
Football fiction is playing out for real....
I’m not a clairvoyant. If I was I’d be topping up my income on Brighton’s sea front under the name ‘Mystic Wello’.
But some of my football fiction is playing out in reality, including the incredible fairy tale run of FK Bodø/Glimt, the first Norwegian team to ever reach the semi-finals of a European competition. On Thursday they play the first leg of their Europa League semi-final against Tottenham.
In the Man Who Murdered Football, I used a fictional Norwegian club named Østgaland to explore how top level football needs to be fairer. The club shock the pundits with a brilliant run to the late stages of a European competition. But in the quarter-finals they are humiliated by an English team with a prolific tall striker, who happens to be Norwegian.
Rather than going quietly, the Østgaland’s owner Christian, a man of integrity, decides to make a stand against elite football. And says his club will no longer be playing in European competitions until the system is less skewed by oil money and big business. A controversial move that gets support in Norway, then wider Scandinavia, then Germany….until world football starts to properly implode.
Yes I have imagined an unlikely apocalyptic scenario for football to make a point, so I I’m not expecting things to go that far! But it’s been eyepopping to see Bodø Glimt embark on their historic, exhilarating adventure in European football this season. Illuminating the Europa league with a long sequence of victories, including some incredible drama that I’d be reluctant to invent in fiction.
Just like Østgaland they play in an all-yellow kit!
On the way to the quarter-finals Bodø beat Porto, Braga, Twente, Olympiacos and Besiktas, saving their skins with late goals in front of their yellow-clad, delirious fans.
In that quarter-final, Bodø knocked out Lazio in a major shock. Having won the first leg 2-0 in Norway, the fairy tale looked over on a wild night in Rome, when Lazio levelled the tie in added time, then took the lead in extra time. But Bodo equalised to force a penalty shootout, and despite missing their first, held their nerve for a scarcely believable triumph. Tottenham are clear favourites to reach the final, but won’t be underestimating their unlikely opponents.
I wrote the fable about Østgaland a couple of years ago when I was unhappy with the unfairness and inequality of European competition. But as I wrote here earlier in the season, UEFA’s changes appear to have worked. Credit where it’s due. I’m pleased that the real-life fable has a happier ending!
Football Fables are mainly based on things that have happened, are happening, or in danger of unfolding, though the real game is often becoming crazier and more absurd than even my caricatures of football.
“You couldn’t make it up?” Actually you can…read on for he dreaded VAR, shouty commentators and mergers….