Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Haugesund will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Haugesund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Diamantis Legisi has just signed for Haugesund, and for once the answer mattered.
In brief
SquadWords at Haugesund training over how hard people work
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 25 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Ahmad Aburasyin has just signed for Haugesund, and for once the answer mattered.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Haugesund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 6 goals between Haugesund and Sarpsborg 08, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Amund Wichne 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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 32 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Florin Ştefan 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Haugesund will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Emil Rohd did not need any: 8.90, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Martin Bjørnbak 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
He is 21, he is averaging 7.01, and older professionals have started passing to him in the difficult minutes. That last part is the real scouting report.
At 21 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.
11 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Haugesund will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“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; Haugesund are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 23 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Florin Ştefan 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Einar Fauskanger is 18, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Haugesund will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Martin Bjørnbak 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Niklas Sandberg was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.60. 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Haugesund training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Miika Koskela 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.
10 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Position 15 and 5 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Almar Grindhaug scored, was marked 7.32, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Haugesund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Miika Koskela scored, and precious little else went right: 2‑3 to IK Start, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Haugesund training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Florin Ştefan 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.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Martin Bjørnbak 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Florin Ştefan 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.
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.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
Florin Ştefan 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.
Valerenga left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Miika Koskela 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.
10 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.
0‑3 to Bodo/Glimt, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Sory Diarra reports back to Haugesund with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Martin Bjørnbak 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Florin Ştefan 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.
6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Haugesund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Amund Wichne, and the manager let it.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at Haugesund training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Anders Bondhus 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.
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.
The phone has started ringing about Sory Diarra again, and this time the name on the line is Saipa. Haugesund are listening politely and promising nothing.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Sory Diarra has agreed terms with Valerenga for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Martin Bjørnbak 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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Haugesund training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Miika Koskela 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.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Esbjerg will make the call about Håvard Vatland Karlsen this week. Haugesund have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
Stabaek go through and Haugesund go home, 0‑1 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The phone has started ringing about Håvard Vatland Karlsen again, and this time the name on the line is Esbjerg. Haugesund are listening politely and promising nothing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Haugesund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Haugesund training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Florin Ştefan 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Haugesund this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
18 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Still no offer on the table, and Amund Wichne’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
6 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.
Alexander Groven is 34 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
Player ratingsAn afternoon Sory Diarra will want back
1Edition
The Haugesund Herald
3 Aug 2026
From our football correspondentUneasy
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Emil Rohd, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.35
A mark of 8.35 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.
Martin Bjørnbak 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Haugesund training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Miika Koskela 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 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.