Latest news with #JoseMourinho-led
The Hindu
a day ago
- Sport
- The Hindu
Fenerbahce vs Benfica LIVE streaming info: Where to watch the 2025-26 UEFA Champions League playoff match?
Jose Mourinho-led Fenerbahce will be looking to take a step closer towards a place in the league phase of the 2025-26 UEFA Champions League when it faces Benfica in the first leg of the playoff round at the Stadyumu Fenerbahçe Şükrü Saracoğlu Spor Kompleksi in Istanbul on Thursday. Fenerbahce qualified for the play-off round with a comeback victory over Feyenoord in the previous round, while Benfica made it past French side Nice to qualify. The match will be played over two legs, with the return fixture taking place in Lisbon on August 27. LIVE STREAMING INFO When will the UEFA Champions League playoff between Fenerbahce and Benfica kick off? The first leg of the UEFA Champions League playoff between Fenerbahce and Benfica will begin at 10 PM local time on August 20 (12:30 AM IST on August 21). Where to watch the UEFA Champions League playoff between Fenerbahce and Benfica? The UEFA Champions League playoff between Fenerbahce and Benfica will be available to live-stream on SonyLiv. Published on Aug 20, 2025
New York Times
30-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Bodo/Glimt: How a team from a small Norwegian coastal town became European semi-finalists
Assessing the Europa League semi-finalists, there is a clear outlier in relation to European success. Manchester United are one of Europe's most decorated clubs and won this competition in 2016-17. Athletic Club had spent six seasons outside European competition before this term, but they had been a fixture in Europe through the 2010s and reached the Europa League final in 2011-12, beating United en route. Tottenham Hotspur have not won a European trophy since 1984, but reached the Champions League final in 2019. Advertisement Like United and Athletic Club, Spurs were grouped among the favourites to lift the trophy in Bilbao on May 21. For their semi-final opponents Bodo/Glimt, who knocked out Lazio in the quarter-final to reach the final four, the prospect of European glory is relatively new. As recently as 2017, Glimt were in Norway's second tier — a footballing galaxy away from Old Trafford, the Stadio Olimpico or the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. After a season consolidating their position in Norway's top flight, the club, based north of the Arctic Circle, finished second in 2019 to begin a rapid rise that has seen them become the nation's undisputed top dogs. On their way, they collected four out of five Eliteserien titles between 2020 and 2024 and established themselves as a force in Europe, beating a Jose Mourinho-led Roma 6-1 in the 2021-22 Europa Conference League group stage, before thrashing Ange Postecoglou's Celtic 5-1 over two legs in the play-off round. This year, they've taken another leap, becoming the first Norwegian team to reach the semi-finals of a major European competition. It's the club's greatest accomplishment and the outstanding achievement of any Scandinavian side this century. 'Bodo is a small coastal town in the north,' says Lars Magnus Roys, a football journalist for Norwegian broadcaster TV2, based in Bergen. 'There's not really much happening in Bodo other than football. What they've done in the past few years has been just remarkable.' Now they have their sights on Tottenham Hotspur, and what would be their most remarkable feat yet — earning a place in the Europa League final. Unlike most of football's recent risers, Glimt's ascent has not coincided with a takeover from a billionaire or sovereign wealth fund. After yo-yoing between Norway's second and first divisions for the decade prior, Glimt won promotion in 2017 and implemented a plan to revolutionise their culture and playing style — catching Norway's biggest clubs with solid practise, not cash injections. Advertisement Led by Kjetil Knutsen, promoted to head coach in 2018 after serving as an assistant, Glimt left a counter-attacking style behind and began dominating in the opposition's half. 'The history of Bodo/Glimt until 2018 is that they were a counter-attacking team,' former assistant coach Morten Kalvenes told The Athletic in 2022. 'So what we had to change at the beginning of 2019, to adapt but use that (counter-attacking history), firstly was to press higher as a team. Move the whole team much higher up the field, when the situation required it. When we were forced to defend low, then we defended low, but every week we were constantly looking for the signal where we can go from low to high.' Inspired by the principles of Uruguay head coach Marcelo Bielsa, Knutsen is renowned in Norway for his 'murderball' training sessions, preparing his players physically to carry out the energetic style that has provided the foundations for their success. 'Kjetil and I had a few meetings working on the preparation before pre-season,' said Kalvenes. 'He told me, 'No 1: when we do pre-season, I want you to highlight especially one thing, and that is the training culture, the training culture, the training culture'. That meant we raised expectations. We raised the bar in structure, discipline, consistency, everything. 'What I noticed immediately was how the players were in training. I felt that I really liked the attitude of the players, how they were reacting to our coaching, how open-minded they were about the feedback, how — if we are training for one hour — then all 60 minutes are of the same level of intensity. What I mean is that if you do some simple passing drills at the beginning of the sessions, then you get the players as focused even when you're working on simple details.' Knutsen's success did not come overnight, despite these principles in place. After winning promotion from the second tier, Glimt lost four of their first five games in charge, and outside pressure began to grow. Still, the club did not flinch, believing in the style and culture he was building. Advertisement 'It was never, ever a discussion internally,' says sporting director Havard Sakariassen. 'The way I see it, if you know something about football, you saw the team was on a really good path. The way we played was much more dominant than the years before. We didn't manage to score a lot of goals, but we drew a lot of games. It was more, 'If you go, we all go'. That was the internal thing. 'This is not a big club with a lot of decision-makers. There is no owner here. Nothing like that. In core, during that period, we were 100 per cent certain Kjetil was the right man — and he knew it.' A joined-up focus between the coaching team and the recruitment strategy was crucial to the eventual success. Without hordes of cash to hoover up Scandinavian talent set for stardom, Glimt have typically recruited locally. Only one senior player, goalkeeper Nikita Haikin, who was born in Israel and represents Russia, hails from outside Norway and Denmark. Patrick Berg, their midfield fulcrum and star player, is homegrown and part of a family dynasty. Berg's grandfather Harald played 12 seasons for his hometown club and won 43 caps for Norway, and his three sons, Runar, Arild and Patrick's father Orjan, also played for Glimt. There's never a guarantee of success when signing a player, but recruiting almost exclusively from Scandinavia brings unique challenges. Of the eight permanent signings Glimt have made in the last 12 months, only Jens Petter Hauge has featured for their national team in the past five years. Like Berg, who left for Lens in 2022 and returned six months later, Hauge was re-signed from Eintracht Frankfurt after leaving Norway for a top-five European league and struggling to adjust. Placed within an environment that allows incoming players to settle, it's no coincidence that Glimt players tend to maximise their talent. 'The logistics are really, really hard,' says Sakariassen. 'But the main thing is how you work with people because I know that we recruit good players. We have seen the potential. If they come here and don't perform well for the first or second month, or everything is new, we still spend the time, and we try to get the potential out of them. We work hard with the people we have, and we believe that when we bring people in, we can help them release their potential. But it's hard, and everyone is trying to do the same. 'We have a clear way of playing, which makes it easier to recruit players. We play 4-3-3. The demands of each role are really easy to identify, so we look for players with an X factor, players who can make a difference for us in Europe. We truly believe we can develop players and those players can get to their full potential. We need a blend of older players with experience, younger players and those peaking in performance, but they all have to be able to handle the intensity we demand, and that can be hard for older players. Advertisement 'I think it has a value in itself, in your life, to be able to play at this level in your home town, also with your friends. So I think the culture in the club here is something they really enjoy. Also of course, over the years, we have become competitive in Scandinavia regarding salaries and the business part of it. But I think it has to be rare to be able to play football with your mates at this level anywhere in Europe, and that has a value.' Time, which allowed Knutsen to thrive in his first job in Norway's top tier and brought the best out of players who had difficulty with the initial adjustment, is a privilege not often afforded to big clubs in elite leagues. There is some parallel with Athletic Club, whose Basque-only policy emphasises long-term player development, but Ruben Amorim and Postecoglou are under pressure to deliver in Europe after disappointing league seasons at United and Spurs, respectively. As the leading light of Scandinavian football, there is regional pressure to maintain their relative overperformance, but the freedom to operate outside the intense microscope their semi-final counterparts are subjected to has helped their evolution. 'There is pressure around us, but not in the way you see in other clubs,' says Sakariassen. 'That pressure is not just something for the club, but also with the players. If you get a lot of criticism, it's maybe hard to perform. Bodo is 55,000 people, and it's on another level. So it's probably easier to get out their potential and have some time here, too.' 'For us, it's to ride the momentum, and that means that we have to be a performing club all the time. We have to work on that and try to be patient with the players that we have, to have the time to grow. Normally, it takes even the best players that we brought in… like Albert Gronbaek, it took him six to nine months. Hugo Vetlesen, it took him one and a half years before he showed his full self in the team. So patience is definitely a part of it. And luckily, we have people with some patience.' Gronbaek later became a Denmark international and was eventually sold for €12million (£10m) to Rennes after two seasons in northern Norway. Vetlesen left for Club Brugge in 2023 and made seven appearances in the Champions League this term. While performance in European competition has propelled them into financial parity with Scandinavia's biggest clubs, there's an acceptance that when players shine, there will be interest from more affluent and prestigious sides. Given this success has been under the watch of Knutsen, clubs around Europe have their eyes on the coach, too. He was reportedly on Brighton and Hove Albion's list before they appointed Roberto De Zerbi in 2022 and had interest from Ajax and Celtic the following summer. As he has been the guiding light through this period, there's an element of the unknown if he were to leave Glimt, but the club is confident that their culture — akin to Liverpool's famous 'boot room' succession plan — is strong enough to continue rising. 'Of course, Kjetil is one of the key personnel here. But we are very team-driven, also within the coaching room,' says Sakariassen. 'Of course, Kjetil will take the decisions at the end, but it's a kind of a flat structure where everyone is cautious on the pitch. Also, the way we work with the logistics, it's not one person who makes the decisions; it's not me who makes the decisions and 'We do it this way', we do it together. So I hope that if somebody quits or for other reasons can't work in the coming year, we are spreading out the knowledge that could be a good and sustainable path into the future.' Advertisement The future appears to be in safe hands but all immediate focus is on the Europa League semi-final. Three Glimt players are suspended for the first leg, including Berg, and an injury to starting centre-back Odin Bjortuft in their 3-0 win over KFUM in the Eliteserien could weaken their preferred starting XI further. Glimt have learned to be savvy in European matches and have impressed away from home this season, including in a narrow 3-2 defeat away to United in November. But on the artificial pitch at Aspmyra, they truly fancy their chances against anybody. 'I think we will have the same belief that we had against Olympiacos, Lazio, Twente — it is not an easy way to play Tottenham,' says Sakariassen. 'I hope we don't focus on the occasion, play the game, and dare to be ourselves. Of course, it is a massive game, the interest around the club and the games are massive here in Bodo too, but I hope we have and I truly believe we have all the tools to be brave enough to go out in London and just be Bodo/Glimt. 'The experience that we have gained over the last few years makes us more confident in situations like this. I truly believe in the team and hope we make two great performances against Tottenham. Starting away.'
