Comment This is a comment, written by an editorial staff member. The commentary expresses the writer’s views.
Imagine the following scenario:
At a railway station outside Barcelona, two small boys from Bergen are standing and pasting a sticker on a post. They are on their way to see Brann in the quarter-finals of the Champions League. Against FC Barcelona. On the sticker there is a picture of Jon Fosse.
This could perhaps have been the start of a narrow surrealist novel. Or just a list of information that doesn’t actually belong together.
Fire, quarter-final in the Champions League, children on away trips abroad, Barcelona and Jon Fosse.
If you had at any time, two, ten or twenty years ago, predicted that this situation would happen on Maundy Thursday in 2024, you would have been branded as crazy on the spot.
Nevertheless, it happened.
Just one of several stories that illustrate the completely unlikely journey Sportsklubben Brann has been through in a very short time.
Not just as a football team, but as an inclusive community. As something that Bergens and Westerners can be infinitely proud of.
As far away from boyishness and old sins as one can get.
Let’s not get hung up on the mud from the past. Namely, there are several stories.
In the front row on the boiling away field during the quarter-final, they stood for what is most important. Young girls with bucket hats and fire suits, who think it’s perfectly natural to dream of playing for Brann. They also think that it is completely natural to travel away.
There were also the ladies who really paved the way. For the girls in the stands and the girls out on the grass. Without the veteran ladies from Sandviken, who had to win the women’s match before they could play a football match, it would hardly have been a European adventure at Brann.
That the hard core of fire supporters, those who have been to hundreds of away matches with the men’s team, tactfully shouted “Football is for women!”, is a bigger deal than one would think. It was not long ago that attitudes here were completely different.
Yes, it is not just on the football pitch that Brann has made a mark in Europe. FC Barcelona had never before hosted a larger away crowd for a women’s match.
The supporters of Brann have taken the atmosphere to a level that women’s football has hardly seen. The reporter for The Guardian put it this way during the quarter-finals:
«You know when people ask who you’d want to narrate your life? I want Brann fans to support my life, these die hard fans are making the atmosphere so far.»
When Brann scored in the quarter-finals, against perhaps the best women’s team that has ever existed, it was two 18-year-olds who played out Barça’s star gallery. One of them, Tomine Svendheim from Arna, had never scored for Brann. Now he has. On the very biggest stage.
In four matches against the most unapproachable in the industry, Barcelona and Lyon, Brann has managed to score in every single match.
Of all the four teams that made it out of the quarter-finals, it was Brann who came out the best, even though they probably faced the toughest opposition. Brann can unashamedly boast of having come fifth in the world’s toughest club tournament.
For a team that struggled hard last spring, and a club that relatively recently set a new record in scandalizing itself, it is a sporting achievement completely without parallel.
Back to the two queue boys with the sticker with a picture of Jon Fosse at the train station. That a New Norwegian author, who writes the most ambitious literature, can be used to build an identity about Brann, could never have happened before.
Just give an example of a club that has room for those who have previously been rejected.
Right now Brann is exactly what Brann should be. On and off the new hybrid grass at the Stadium. It is not certain that it will last.
It is still permissible to hope.
For the most important, Maundy Thursday 2024 was a memory for life anyway.
For those on the track, who have finally experienced the conditions their sport deserves. And mastery at the very highest level.
For the girls in the stands, who can have a dream that not even today’s players could have when they were little.
And that the little boys, the ones with the sticker, think it’s completely natural to have football-playing role models who are girls.