The gamers and training employees of Norwegian workforce Bodo/Glimt had been making ready to fly out for some warm-weather preseason coaching in Spain in March when soccer within the Nordic nation got here to a standstill due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Realizing that funds can be stretched in a pandemic, most golf equipment in Norway’s prime division put their gamers on furlough.

The management at Bodo/Glimt had different concepts.

”We stood there with all staff of the membership and stated nobody was going to go away,” the membership’s chairman, Inge Henning Andersen, instructed The Related Press.

”We thought the most effective factor within the state of affairs was to proceed coaching . I feel that was certainly one of greatest choices we ever made on the membership.”

Their health and depth ranges far exceeding that of their rivals, Bodo/Glimt’s gamers began the season ”like one million {dollars},” Andersen stated with a smile.

They have not appeared again.

On Sunday, the unheralded workforce from Norway’s west coast wants only a level in a match at Stromsgodset to clinch the primary top-flight title in its 104-year historical past and, in doing so, change into essentially the most northerly membership to be Norwegian champion.

They’re going to possible be doing it in record-breaking style, too.

Bodo/Glimt has misplaced simply certainly one of its 24 video games and, on 65 factors, wants seven extra from its remaining six video games to set a document factors haul within the Eliteserien. On 83 targets to this point, the workforce is barely 4 shy of the document for a single top-flight season.

They’ve scored 4 or extra targets on eight events within the league and are 18 factors away from second-place Molde, the defending champion.

The procession to the 2020 title is much more exceptional given Bodo/Glimt has a standing as an ”elevator membership” – because it’s known as in Norway – due to its historical past of going forwards and backwards between the highest two divisions. The final promotion got here as just lately as 2017, so that is simply their third season again in prime flight.

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Requested to clarify his membership’s rise, Andersen stated there was no eureka second.

”Simply a whole lot of good choices during the last three or 4 years,” he stated, starting from the promotion of Kjetil Knutsen to move coach after the 2017 season, to a cultural change by the workforce administration forward of the 2019 season, which the workforce completed in second place.

”They determined to go away all the pieces behind and cease aiming for a consequence like a top-eight end, a top-10 end or perhaps a top-three end. Simply depart it, give attention to growing the gamers. Principally simply are available as the most effective model you possibly can presumably be – and are available a greater individual tomorrow.

”Possibly one thing dropped from their shoulders.”

Linked to that was the hiring a few years earlier of Bjorn Mannsverk, a former fighter pilot-turned-mental coach. He holds particular person and group periods with the gamers, who’ve now turned to meditation earlier than coaching periods.

Mannsverk has performed a vital position in making the gamers imagine in themselves extra, notably Ulrik Saltnes and Patrick Berg – midfielders who’ve change into talismanic figures for the workforce.

”He felt strain within the abdomen, and had stress-related syndromes,” Andersen stated of the 27-year-old Saltnes. ”He was really confused. He may do effectively in coaching however not in matches.

”So that they started to speak about this . and at last discover a method out of it.”

The management at Bodo/Glimt accepts the membership will be unable to maintain maintain of its greatest gamers. In the beginning of final month, for instance, winger Jens Petter Hauge joined Italian big AC Milan, which performed Bodo/Glimt within the Europa League group stage this season and was suitably impressed by the Norwegian aspect’s then-20-year-old star attacker. The Italian membership reportedly paid a switch payment of $5 million.

That is, in any case, a membership which budgeted for house crowds of three,600 for video games at its Aspmyra Stadion this season. The inhabitants of town of Bodo is round 50,000.

It makes the success story of Bodo/Glimt all of the extra beautiful because it seems to safe the largest trophy in its historical past and, who is aware of, get by way of qualifying to achieve the Champions League group stage subsequent yr.

”To get the worldwide reference for the boys,” Andersen stated, ”is how we are able to construct the membership additional.”

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Extra AP soccer: https://apnews.com/Soccer and https://twitter.com/AP-Sports activities

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Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80