Ghayas Zahid 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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Jens Petter Hauge 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.
Something was said to Carl Lange and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Valerenga, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“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 Valerenga will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
Somebody from Bodo/Glimt has seen every one of Jens Petter Hauge’s last few games. Nobody travels that far that often out of curiosity, and everybody at Valerenga knows it.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Valerenga is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Ghayas Zahid 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Valerenga can tell you which week it ends in.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Ruben Ajer has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Marcus Henriksen is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Valerenga is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Jens Petter Hauge and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at Valerenga training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ghayas Zahid 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.
Nothing about the week ahead is ordinary. Lillestrom on Saturday, a town that has already started talking about it, and a dressing room that does not need telling what it means.
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.
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
In brief
The dugoutSomebody else is better right now than Eirik Holmen
SquadGetting past Oscar Hedvall has become the hardest job in the division
Successful dribbles: 29. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Valerenga this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
13 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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Petter Strand’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Valerenga needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Two goals and a mark of 8.35 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Jens Petter Hauge 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 Ghayas Zahid was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Brice Ambina. 2‑1 against Stabaek, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
200 times in these colours, in all weathers and under four or five different managers. That kind of service is quietly disappearing from the game.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Bjorn Haaland kept it short after the 2‑1 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Valerenga can pretend not to have heard.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Valerenga they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Jens Petter Hauge. 1‑0 against Stromsgodset, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.88 on the card, and the Valerenga support went home talking about one name.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Bjorn Haaland, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
Successful dribbles: 13. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 10 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Magnus Sjøeng will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Valerenga the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Ghayas Zahid 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.
Marked 8.05. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Valerenga.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑2 Bjorn Haaland left the room before anybody could ask which.
Ivan Näsberg 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
Words at Valerenga training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ghayas Zahid 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.
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.
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.
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.
Jens Petter Hauge 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Valerenga training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ghayas Zahid 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.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.08, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Bjorn Haaland, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
The offer from Plymouth Argyle for Ghayas Zahid was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Valerenga they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
8.32. 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.
Four or five weekends of consistency, measured against everybody else in the division. A quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Bjorn Haaland kept it short after the 1‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Valerenga lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Two goals and a mark of 8.21 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
The phone has started ringing about Ghayas Zahid again, and this time the name on the line is Plymouth Argyle. Valerenga are listening politely and promising nothing.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Valerenga is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Ivan Näsberg 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Jens Petter Hauge. 2‑0 against Odd, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Successful dribbles: 19. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
The dugout31 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am not going to get carried away and I will not let them either. It was a good day. There will be harder ones.” Bjorn Haaland kept it short after the 2‑0 win, which is what managers do when they are happy.
In brief
The dugoutCarl Lange dropped after a run of poor form
24 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Valerenga lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Valerenga had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at NK Domzale, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Ghayas Zahid 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Carrarese have kept their man, and Valerenga go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Marked 7.92. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
Squad24 Aug 2026
13 new faces, and Valerenga are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
32 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Valerenga lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Successful dribbles: 33. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Bodo/Glimt did not want to sell and the number is why they did. $8.7M for Jens Petter Hauge, and the expectation that arrives with him is the kind no amount of settling-in period softens.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
Deadline passes with 7 signed and 1 gone
That is the business done at Valerenga 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.
Mjondalen paid $2.4M and Valerenga took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Valerenga have gone to Molde 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.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Empoli keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Valerenga 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Eirik Holmen has just signed for Valerenga, and for once the answer mattered.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Bodo/Glimt have kept their man, and Valerenga go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Valerenga is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Valerenga have done the hard part with Empoli, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Magnus Westergaard has agreed terms with Rosenborg for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Ghayas Zahid 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 phone has started ringing about Mathias Grundetjern again, and this time the name on the line is Mjondalen. Valerenga are listening politely and promising nothing.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ghayas Zahid was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Valerenga asked and Hammarby said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.