Arne O. Holm says A Football Achievement of Historic High North Dimensions
A firework of an Arctic football match. (Photo: Arne O. Holm)
Bodø, Northern Norway (Comment): They crushed a "continental superpower," according to the British The Guardian. And not just that. With a historic football win over Manchester City themselves, Bodø/Glimt even managed to chase Donald Trump out of the headlines for a while. That is also something they are quite alone in doing.
This is a comment written by a member of the editorial staff. All views expressed are the writer's own.
A win for everyone who needed a break from suffering and madness. A pause, a Nirvana for tired minds.
Wandering catastrophe
No one else has managed to shift the spotlight away from the US' wandering catastrophe.
For the first time, a home win for a football team north of the Arctic Circle in the greatest of football leagues.
UEFA Champions League.
Bodø/Glimt: 3
Manchester City: 1
And it all took place to the beat of an applauding audience that could hardly believe what they saw. And applause in the wintry darkness of the Arctic Circle differs from applause on other continents.
It's warm and almost loving.
Applause wrapped in down
The applause is wrapped in home-knit mittens, leather gloves, or down. An entirely different sound than bare hands hitting each other. Muffled. Not like a snare drum. It's warm and almost loving. Tender.
Because there we were. Under a sky lit up by Northern Lights, astonished.
Almost stunned by the resistance from the North at the small Aspmyra stadium, the world's best footballer, Rodri Hernandez, received two yellow cards and was shown a red card within one minute.
One of the world's highest-paid players, Erling Braut Haaland, was reduced to an extra as Bodø/Glimt's Jens Petter Hauge scored the indisputably most beautiful goal in this year's Champions League series.
Manchester City's number nine also looked like an extra compared to his jersey number counterpart at Bodø/Glimt. Kasper Høegh scored two. Haaland none.
It puts wind in our sails.
We have waited for this moment, we who live in the North. We who report from the North. The world's greatest football achievement north of the Arctic Circle.
We knew it would come, but perhaps not against one of the world's best football teams.
Everything is possible
And yet, that is exactly what happened.
Because football is so much more than what takes place on the field. It fulfills the ambitions of the High North policy. It puts wind in our sails to the extent that we have ever lacked wind.
It shows us that dreams can be realized. That the impossible is possible.
We all have a lot to learn from Bodø/Glimt.
