73 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rosenborg lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Ole Selnæs and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Patrick Berg 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.
Nobody at Rosenborg 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.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
The manager has not finished forgetting Iver Fossum's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
The captaincy has been taken off Emil Ceïde. Rosenborg will call it a decision about the team; a dressing room reads it as a verdict on a man.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Martin Sorloth chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
97 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Rosenborg lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Rosenborg is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
11 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Simen Bolkan Nordli and Rosenborg agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Rosenborg this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
A point taken on 94 minutes is worth exactly one point and considerably more than that to a dressing room. This side does not stop, which is a reputation worth more than the result.
104 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Rosenborg lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
0‑0 against Feyenoord, under lights, against people who do not speak the same language as the crowd. These are the evenings a club measures its decade in, and there are never as many of them as anybody expects.
10 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
At 17 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.
Lillestrom left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Rosenborg training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jonas Svensson is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
112 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Rosenborg lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Position 2, 19 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
There are goals, and then there are goals against that particular opponent. The Rosenborg support have their bragging rights for a year and they know exactly whose name is on them.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Rosenborg they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Ole Selnæs 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Patrick Berg 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.
9 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
4‑0. Nights like this are why clubs spend decades trying to qualify for this competition, and they arrive perhaps twice in that time. Everybody who was in the ground will describe it badly for years.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Dino Islamović provided it, and the 9.35 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Mikkel Ceïde will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Rosenborg the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Ole Selnæs scored, was marked 7.96, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
1 for Patrick Berg, marked 7.99, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Rosenborg heard it as anything else.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Patrick Berg was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Rosenborg they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Mikkel Ceïde has agreed terms with Bodo/Glimt for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Ole Selnæs 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.
Valerenga will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Magnus Sjøeng has pre-agreed a move to Rosenborg, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Successful dribbles: 20. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Patrick Berg 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.
12 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.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Ola Brynhildsen provided it, and the 9.98 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
1 kept out from twelve yards, and a stadium that will describe each of them for twenty years. A goalkeeper needs one night like this in a career, and this was it.
Rosenborg paid $5.7M and Bodo/Glimt took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Håkon Evjen was one of the reasons people came, and $8.8M does not replace that by itself.
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. Rosenborg have paid $5.7M for Patrick Berg, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Jesper Reitan-Sunde did not need any: 8.46, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Rosenborg have 4 straight wins of it.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
Deadline passes with 3 signed and 0 gone
That is the business done at Rosenborg until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Legia keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Bodo/Glimt hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
Mjondalen will want this one forgotten quickly: 3‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Rosenborg were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Two goals and a mark of 9.30 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Rosenborg have gone to Bodo/Glimt with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
7.85, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Rosenborg had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Hammarby, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
$420.0K on the table at Viking. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Ole Selnæs 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.
301 appearances across 15 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
The phone has started ringing about Håkon Evjen again, and this time the name on the line is AIK. Bodo/Glimt are listening politely and promising nothing.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Jens Petter Hauge 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.
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.58, and 2 involvements.