Marked for Magnar Ødegaard
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad11 Oct 2027
93 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Tromso lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad11 Oct 2027
Tempers go at Tromso
Ruben Yttergård Jenssen was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The dugout11 Oct 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Ieltsin Camões, and the manager let it.
Loan watch11 Oct 2027
“I did not go to Odd to sit and watch. I want to come back to Tromso and fight for my place.” 3 appearances in 9 matches say the rest.
Squad11 Oct 2027
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Tromso will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
Squad11 Oct 2027
Too much change too quickly at Tromso
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Looking ahead11 Oct 2027
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Sarpsborg 08 in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Market11 Oct 2027
The name of Lars Olden Larsen keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Tromso say nothing, which says plenty.
Loan watch11 Oct 2027
The goals keep arriving from Daniel Braut’s exile
5 goals in 24 games at Kalmar FF — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Tromso updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad6 Sep 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Gustav Valsvik
130 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Tromso lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market6 Sep 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market6 Sep 2027
B.93 come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Tromso did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Words exchanged at Tromso
Ruben Yttergård Jenssen and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Market6 Sep 2027
The shirt still fits. Magnar Ødegaard is back at Tromso, and half the ground remembers him in these colours already. Some signings need selling to the town; this one sold itself.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Lars Olden Larsen falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Gustav Valsvik slips down the pecking order
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Gustav Valsvik is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
Market6 Sep 2027
Mikkel Wennberg Lindbäck is 20, and Tromso have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
The dugout6 Sep 2027
Jakob Haugaard has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Tromso will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Loan watch15 Mar 2027
38 appearances at Notts County and the goals keep coming. Sarpsborg 08 are watching this more closely than the borrowing club would like.
Market15 Mar 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sarpsborg 08 can pretend not to have heard.
Market15 Mar 2027
Noa Williams has left for Sandefjord in a $2.2M deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Squad15 Mar 2027
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Sarpsborg 08 are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Transfer targets15 Mar 2027
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. CSKA Moscow have kept their man, and Sarpsborg 08 go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad15 Mar 2027
37 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
The dugout15 Mar 2027
The manager makes an example of Andreas Nibe
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Transfer targets15 Mar 2027
A loan enquiry to Remo Stars: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market22 Feb 2027
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Sarpsborg 08, and it is not being withdrawn.
Match22 Feb 2027
32 points and nobody above them. The word is not being said around the ground yet, and it is being thought in every seat.
Transfer targets22 Feb 2027
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
The dugout22 Feb 2027
Camil Mmaee gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Market22 Feb 2027
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Sarpsborg 08 know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Market22 Feb 2027
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Squad22 Feb 2027
“I did not sign to watch. Nobody does.” The oldest complaint in the game, and Sarpsborg 08 will have to answer it with minutes or with a move.
Market22 Feb 2027
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Magnar Ødegaard may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Marius Lode has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad4 Jan 2027
The season belongs to Menno Koch
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Sarpsborg 08 have had the benefit of it.
Squad4 Jan 2027
At 22 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Market4 Jan 2027
As if he never left: Sigurd Kvile returns
Some transfers need a press campaign. This one needed a shirt with the old number on it. Sigurd Kvile is a Sarpsborg 08 player again, and the town has its story of the summer.
Loan watch4 Jan 2027
16 goals in 24 games at Notts County — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Sarpsborg 08 updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
Squad4 Jan 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sarpsborg 08 this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad4 Jan 2027
The formation has left Sigurd Kvile behind
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Sarpsborg 08 will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
The dugout4 Jan 2027
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Market4 Jan 2027
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Mamour N'Diaye signs something — a contract at Sarpsborg 08 or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Market4 Jan 2027
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Sarpsborg 08, another week without a signature from Håkon Finstad-Vogt.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match24 Oct 2026
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Sarpsborg 08 have 8 straight wins of it.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
Magnar Ødegaard: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sarpsborg 08 have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market26 Oct 2026
Leander Øy has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Sarpsborg 08 they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad26 Oct 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Mamour N'Diaye commits to Sarpsborg 08 for another 5 years.
Match24 Oct 2026
Another one collected away from home
4 on the bounce on the road for Sarpsborg 08. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
The terraces26 Oct 2026
The crowd has taken to Aimar Sher
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Looking ahead26 Oct 2026
The fixture the rest of the division is looking forward to more than either of the sides in it. Both know a win changes the season and a defeat does not end it, which is what makes it hard to play.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.02, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Sep 2026
Aimar Sher hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sarpsborg 08 can pretend not to have heard.
Market7 Sep 2026
The deal that would have taken Mamour N'Diaye to Porto has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to Sarpsborg 08 with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Mamour N'Diaye is the month’s best young player
At 20 he was better than everybody his age in the division for four weeks running, which is harder than one good afternoon. Sarpsborg 08 will try not to make too much of it.
Market7 Sep 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Sarpsborg 08, another week without a signature from Eirik Wichne.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Sigurd Rosted has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Mamour N'Diaye named in the team of the month
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Mamour N'Diaye is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Claus Niyukuri has moved up it.
Looking ahead7 Sep 2026
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Haugesund in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
Market7 Sep 2026
The Sondre Sørli story refuses to die
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Sondre Sørli signs something — a contract at Sarpsborg 08 or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.