by “Farmers did not play football,” said the supporter of always Geir Magnus Sandve because his beloved Bryne FK was only founded in 1926. These were important moments for the Norwegian football club in the southwest agricultural region of Jæren. Last season, they were promoted to the Eliteerian, the main division, for the first time in 22 years ahead of a crowd of 5,000 capacities and excitement was built before the start of the season at the end of March. Fans hope that they will be able to return to heights that have not been seen since they won the Cup in Oslo in 1987 – which would have been considered the crowning of the club without the rise of the Erling Haaland.
In the fragile world and fueled by English football, it might seem that the Haaland star is decreasing this season. It is easy to forget that it is second behind Mohamed Salah in the Golden Boot of Premier League after winning it in the previous two seasons. At the age of 24, he was the top scorer of the Norwegian national team (38 in 39 games) and a winner of the Champions League, the Premier League and the Austrian League. The playground of the school of my six-year-old son, Ernest, is no longer consumed by the great debate of Messi-Ronaldo, but it is rather alive with the cries of “Haaaaarr-Land”.
It is therefore a pleasure to take Ernest and the rest of my family to the last attraction of Norway: the Haaland Safari. Bryne FK even organized us so that we stayed in the “Haaland suite” of the local Hotell Jæren, where a mural on the wall of the living space represents Erling at different stages of his career, starting as the boy with dairy hair playing for Bryne FK. My wife, Hayley, and I are walking with our children from the hotel through cold explosions of North Sea Air to meet the club’s marketing director, Bjørn Hagerup Røken, and his brother Frode Hagerup, who is on the board and works in local tourism – at the Bryne Swept Bryne stadium.
With them, some pension fans, including Sandve, who volunteer to take tourists to the Haaland Safari, among other tasks, from the stadium to be cleaning storage. “We know the club,” said another, Endre Réfsnes. “And we love the club.”
This summer, the tourists of the British cruise ship Iona that the quays of Stavanger have the choice: visit the natural wonder of this Norway region, Preikestolen (The Pulpit Rock), or be conducted around an effiloche football field and the other Haaland Safari stops for which the participants are loaded with 750 Kroner Norwegian (£ 54). The tour, available in English and Norwegian, started as a little fun a few years ago, but it is part of a serious stab to put Bryne FK and by extension the city itself on the map. Frode says that Manacor, Mallorca, from where Rafael Nadal, and Madeira, the house of Cristiano Ronaldo, are models.
We are starting to Jærhallen, a room for a room training rebuilt a few years ago and opened a surprise visit to Haaland (the local training of children at the time did not believe it was him). It was initially built to keep players dry because this area of Norway is softer but also dietary. It is open every day so that anyone who comes to refine his skills – and it’s free. Inside, a young player recently signed from Nigeria makes a ping through bullets through the corridor.
Haaland is the son of the former Nottingham Forest midfielder, Leeds and Manchester City, Alf-Inge Haaland, and lived in England until the family returned to their Bryne properties in 2003. An inclusive approach and focused on the person led to exceptional results. Endre shows us the drylaveggenRebuilt in tribute to the wooden wall where young Erling would try to strike exactly the same point again and again. The word “Dryla” is only common in southwest Norway. “This usually refers to hitting or kicking something with enormous strength,” writes Lars Sivertsen, in his biography of Haaland. “The most precise and most pleasant phonetic translation is probably” Wallop “something …”
Before leaving the Jærhallen, Endre underlines the huge photos of Haaland and Tuva Hansen, who plays for the women’s team from Bayern Munich, alongside a legend in Norwegian: “We are going to sow the joy of football, feed talent and harvest miracles.” This could make Haaland look like a large price winner vegetable. But it is not only sloganering. The club’s philosophy is linked to the agricultural character of the Jæren region. Working to transform the hills strewn into arable lands using only shovels, before heavy machines, was exhausting, and contributed to the myth of Jæren as a place where the hard work was a prerequisite.
Bryne FK has a section of the stadium where farmers can drive their tractors to watch the match. When the club played Viking FK during the 2001 Cup final in Oslo, the Norwegian press reported how a convoy of tractors had traveled with cucumbers, cabbage and broccoli to deliver to the people they met along the way, before starting through the capital, by turning a sea of red and white. However, the fans plan to use sheep bells to create a threatening din during the game did not work, and Bryne lost 3-0.
Haaland, despite his image as a multimillionaire footballer who mocks the Superyacht, always connects to this side of Bryne. His articles on the consumption of his “magic potion”, the fresh milk of the farm, gave a boost to local dairy. Growing up, Haaland led tractors to the farm of his uncle Gabriel Hoyland, a former star player from Bryne who, nowadays, is a farmer of potatoes passionate about Burnley FC. A photo of Haaland on the blue tractor of his uncle to a few seasons has become so emblematic in these parts that I am advised to visit the same tractor style – a super dextta manufactured by Fordons in the 1960s – in a space dedicated to the fascinating museum of Varetengarden. When I visit the next day, there are old boys who look at the older models as if they were eyeing classic sports cars.
We arrive at the club shop. A group of Manchester City shirts fell on the red and white merchant – the inhabitants buy shirts from the city, but not so much tourists, who want an authentic home shirt. Like all Norwegian clubs, Bryne belongs to the members, but trade is still vital for their existence and they have a natural entrepreneurial sequence to court business: in the 1980s, they were the first Norwegian club to create a VIP zone. Now Bryne is back in the higher division, investments are necessary, but Bjørn says that they must still be “intelligent on the transfer market”. The rise of International Haaland coincided with a rebirth of fortune for Bryne FK. When Haaland was sold in City, the club was paid up to 10m Nok (£ 710,900). Some hope that Real Madrid will one day rush for him, which means another day of pay for the club, in particular now, he signed a nine -year contract.
We leave the club store and take a look at the playing surface. “We are only one of the few teams in Norway at the highest level that play on natural grass,” explains Sandve. What else is the field? – A farmer, “so he knows how to do it,” explains Endre. The grass will soon be put to the test, when Bryne will launch the new season against the champions of last year, Bodø / Glimt, on March 30.
After playing where Erling is? Looking at the old photos of youth team in the clubhouse, we head for the city, passing the Haaland high school went on the way to the Jæren forum, the highest building in Bryne. From the top, you can see the sea, the mountains, the whole city. We look at the Haaland wall on the side of an old dairy by the street artist born in Bryne, Pøbel, who used a fire extinguisher filled with yellow paint to create it. This is the first thing that visitors to the train see when they arrive. We spend a more modest play, a tribute to the Alf-Inge Haaland, designed by the 12-year-old son of Frode, before heading to the last attraction-a mural representing an Erling animated cartoon affecting its brand meditation celebration, positioned next to the Wen Hua house, its favorite Chinese restaurant, where you can buy a special haaland (sour chicken and rice).
It is difficult to count the small parish details of the hometown of Haaland with its Gargantuan stature in the world. I notice for the rest of the trip that each store sells Haaland brand glacial pacifiers, and speaks to Ståle Økland, former politician and writer whose father, Arne Larsen Økland, played as a star striker for Bryne in the 1970s and 80s. “I remember that I was in Japan last year,” he said. “We were in the mountains by hiking. When we met some of the inhabitants, they asked us where we came from and we said Norway. And the first thing they said was, “Haaland.” “”
