Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Molde they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Pablo Solari was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Eirik Haugan 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.
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Vegar Eggen Hedenstad has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Molde have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Marked 8.34 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Player ratings17 Apr 2028
Pablo Solari was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.23. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Marked 8.05 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
“I watch every Molde game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at IFK Mariehamn runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager’s verdict
The dugoutBirk Risa has become a man the manager trusts
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Molde people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Molde they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 4 arrived, 4 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Exequiel Zeballos was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at Molde 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Birk Risa signs something — a contract at Molde or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Molde have lost him in all but the paperwork.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Molde this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Exequiel Zeballos 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Birk Risa is on it.
A clause somebody insisted on years ago, in a negotiation nobody remembers, has just paid Molde $466.7K. Samukele Kabini left a long time ago; the paperwork stayed.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Exequiel Zeballos signs something — a contract at Molde or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Molde. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Erik Frøysa trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Molde and IF Elfsborg have settled on $11.0M. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Molde people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“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 Molde, and it is not being withdrawn.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Thomas Grøgaard has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
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.
Viking will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Sondre Bjørshol has pre-agreed a move to Molde, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Exequiel Zeballos was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Birk Risa is on it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Mads Eikrem Myklebust trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
In brief
MarketThe clock does Erik Brenden’s negotiating for him
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Molde this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Molde. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
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.
Eirik Haugan 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Birk Risa is on it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jacob Christensen trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Molde know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Molde. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
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.
Thomas Grøgaard 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.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Something was said to Sebastian Olderheim and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
Albert Posiadała 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 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.
At 19 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.
Marked 8.02 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
1‑0 against Rosenborg, and the songs went on long after the whistle. League positions come and go; days like this get retold at family dinners for years.
There are goals, and then there are goals against that particular opponent. The Molde support have their bragging rights for a year and they know exactly whose name is on them.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Match25 Sep 2027
Another one collected away from home
4 on the bounce on the road for Molde. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
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.
Eirik Haugan 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.
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Caleb Zady Sery.
33 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Molde lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Exequiel Zeballos 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.
Eirik Haugan 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Trent Kone-Doherty and Molde agree another 4 years.
The dugout5 Jul 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Sander Sorloth to a room that had heard them before.
10 arrivals, an average age nobody would call a squad, and a set of parents being shown around a building their sons will spend more time in than at home. The scouting has already happened; today is only the paperwork.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Albert Posiadała is on it.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Molde told Herman Haugen something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, and a scan that said otherwise. He goes back to Bari; Molde go back to the market; and both will insist there is no story here.
Oskar Spiten-Nysæter has gone, the accounts have $3.0M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
Sandefjord did not want to sell and the number is why they did. $1.3M for Marcus Melchior, and the expectation that arrives with him is the kind no amount of settling-in period softens.
Lillestrom paid $3.0M and Molde took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Marcus Melchior has just signed for Molde, and for once the answer mattered.
Molde offered $220.0K; Aalesund said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Caleb Zady Sery was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Molde people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Molde have gone to Bari 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.
“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 Molde, and it is not being withdrawn.
The offer went to Aalesund this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Molde this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Birk Risa 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.
2‑1 against Benfica, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Jalal Abdullai was at the centre of the description.
$15.8M on the table at Cesena. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
13 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
The name of Oskar Spiten-Nysæter has come up in conversations Molde were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
$650.0K was the most the club would pay and Sarpsborg 08 were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Aalesund have kept their man, and Molde go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Jalal Abdullai has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
A season average of 7.15 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. Molde know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
Albert Posiadała 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Birk Risa was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at Molde 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Kristian Lonebu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 94th minute. Dinamo Tbilisi will replay every second of the added time for a week.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Jalal Abdullai provided it, and the 9.17 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
3 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Molde this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Jalal Abdullai has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Birk Risa 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.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Mats Møller Dæhli will call it something else in private.
A mark of 8.02 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
12 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 clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Molde is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Mats Møller Dæhli 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.
He is 19 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Birk Risa was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
200 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
The words a physio says slowly. 21 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Molde this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Birk Risa was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Sander Sorloth after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Jalal Abdullai is on it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Emil Breivik trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.92 for the rest of it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Birk Risa 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.
At 19 he was better than everybody his age in the division for four weeks running, which is harder than one good afternoon. Molde will try not to make too much of it.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Molde, another week without a signature from Albert Posiadała.
Jalal Abdullai, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.72
A mark of 8.72 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Everything agreed with another club, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Mats Møller Dæhli 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.
He is 21 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
8.45. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.