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04/30 01:22 CDT How a fighter pilot's mental techniques helped tiny Bodo/Glimt
reach the Europa League semifinals
How a fighter pilot's mental techniques helped tiny Bodo/Glimt reach the Europa
League semifinals
By STEVE DOUGLAS
AP Sports Writer
How did an unheralded Norwegian team from a tiny town north of the Arctic
Circle become one of the fairy-tale stories of European soccer?
For Bodo/Glimt, the transformation has been underpinned by a fighter pilot who
developed mental techniques for his squadron before bombing missions in Libya.
Bjorn Mannsverk discovered a group of players exuding negative energy and prone
to "a collective mental breakdown" when he was asked in early 2017 to join the
backroom staff of a team that had just been relegated to Norway's second tier.
His task as "mental coach" at Bodo/Glimt? To make players talk openly about
their feelings, lower stress levels, change their attitudes and routines about
things like preparation and nutrition, and remove the stigma around mental
training.
Winning or losing no longer mattered. It was all about following a philosophy
and culture established by Mannsverk, a former Royal Norwegian air force
squadron leader whose military duties took him to Afghanistan after the 9/11
attacks and to Libya for a NATO-led intervention in 2011.
The results have been extraordinary.
After securing an immediate return to Norway's top division, the team --- based
more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) north of Oslo in a fishing town, Bodo,
with a population of around 55,000 --- has captured four of the country's last
five league titles. It started in 2020 with a first in the history of a club
founded in 1916.
Bodo/Glimt has also had some big results in Europe in recent seasons --- a 6-1
thrashing of Jose Mourinho's Roma in the Conference League 2021 stands out ---
and this year it has become the first Norwegian club to reach the semifinals of
a major European competition.
The first leg against Tottenham in the Europa League takes place in London on
Thursday. It's Bodo/Glimt's biggest ever match.
"It is a fairy tale, almost a miracle," Mannsverk told The Associated Press in
a video interview. "How can you actually come from (Norway's) second division
in 2017 to playing a Champions League playoff and teams like Arsenal five years
later?
"But I think it's possible ... if you have the right mentality and you work
hard over time."
An active air force pilot for more than 20 years, Mannsverk and others in his
squadron were the subjects of a mental training project in 2010 where the focus
was on meditation and "every day repeating boring stuff, but with 100%
attention."
It meant that when he was in Libya the following year, he had the mental
capacity to handle the dangerous missions he was asked to perform. His
squadron's mantra --- "train as you intend to fight" --- worked.
"Even though I got strong feelings when my first bombs hit the target and it
was in infernal flames and fragments and everything," he said, "it was like,
'My training said that it's OK, this is happening, recognize that, but know I
have to return and do my job.'"
With Bodo until recently having a NATO air base, it was simply a happy
coincidence that Bodo/Glimt's leadership came across members of the squadron at
the same time as it was seeking a "silver bullet" --- as Mannsverk put it ---
to improve the team's mental conditioning.
A project was born and fully embraced by manager Kjetil Knutsen following his
appointment in 2018.
Bodo/Glimt has never looked back.
Mannsverk's fingerprints are all over the team's behavior, though he
acknowledges there has been such a buy-in by the players that they now take
decisions by themselves.
Like having a rotating cast of eight captains to share leadership duties. Like
when the players gather into a circle --- Mannsverk calls it the "Bodo/Glimt
Ring" --- after conceding a goal to discuss what happened and maintain
solidarity. Like the players having no specific targets, apart from being the
best version of themselves.
Inge Henning Andersen, Bodo/Glimt's chairman, told the AP that midfielder Ulrik
Saltnes considered retiring because he used to suffer from stress-related
stomach issues that flared up around matches. Saltnes opened up about his
problems to Mannsverk and "finally found a way out of it," Andersen said.
The team plays at an intensity that far exceeds its rivals, which players
attribute to Mannsverk.
"I don't think it would be possible to play like that without Bjorn and the
mental work we do," Saltnes once told the BBC.
This season's Europa League campaign is giving Bodo/Glimt widespread attention,
notably for its location. The team's Aspmyra stadium --- with a capacity of
less than 9,000 --- is one of the most northernly in world soccer at 67 degrees
latitude. Tourists have long come to the town on the tip of Norway's west coast
because it is a good spot to see the northern lights.
Bodo, named the European Capital of Culture in 2024, has less than an hour of
sunlight during its shortest days, meaning players take supplements to combat a
lack of sunlight. It can be bitterly cold and windy in the long winters, making
for tough trips for opponents from other countries.
On paper, Tottenham, one of the world's richest clubs, starts as a huge
favorite against Bodo/Glimt. The crowd at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Thursday
will be bigger than Bodo's population.
Yet the English club is having one of its worst seasons in a generation and
currently lies in 16th place in the 20-team Premier League. It gives Bodo/Glimt
a realistic shot at an upset, like it produced when getting past Italian team
Lazio in the quarterfinals.
Another chance, then, for the club to write another amazing chapter in its
remarkable journey.
"We like to tell our story," Mannsverk said. "The philosophy is a good thing.
We know it's difficult in football, where there's so much money involved, to
give a coach or a team the time. And it takes time to change and drill in the
mentality.
"This was not done overnight ... but I'm totally convinced that it will work
more or less all over."
___
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
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