Opinion | The struggles of following a Norwegian league club symptomatic of English Premier League’s hold over much of Europe
- Attendances in Norway and other minor football leagues suffer as Premier League goes from strength-to-strength
It’s Saturday evening and Everton are playing Manchester City as some of the 400 travelling FK Brann fans walk past the screens in Cafe Dublin amid blue flashing lights and the watchful eye of a police escort.
The Brann fans are mostly in their early 20s, male and female, and with the time to travel to support their team home and away. That takes time in Norway, a country as long as the distance between Hong Kong and Beijing, yet with only five million people. Brann fans, singing a song to the tune of Man United’s “We are the pride of all Europe”, put stickers on lamp posts and set off flares.
As they pass a house in the student area, Rosenborg fans sing towards them from a house, shouting out an aggressive “Rosenborg!” A rush and a push follow but no punches are thrown, a bark but no bite. There’s history between these two clubs.
We walk with Sean, an engineering student, who has travelled 13 hours from Bergen overnight on a bus to see Brann, who can lay claim to being the second biggest club in Norway. Yet they have won only three league titles in their 110-year history and are currently labouring mid-table, much like Manchester United, Sean’s favourite English team.