Norway’s Bodo/Glimt’s fairytale run in the Champions League continued as they knocked out last year’s finalists Inter Milan in one of the tournament’s biggest ever shocks.
A season on from becoming the first Norwegian side to reach the semi-finals of a European competition, following their impressive run in the Europa League, head coach Kjetil Knutsen’s minnows have continued their remarkable rise by qualifying for the Champions League last-16, and as tournament debutants.
Bodo/Glimt, who were in Norway’s second-tier as recently as 2017, are the northernmost team to ever play in the Champions League. Based in the small town of Bodo, a 16-hour drive north of Oslo and inside the edge of the Arctic Circle, its whole population of 55,000 could have travelled to Inter’s iconic San Siro and there still would have been plenty of empty seats. Bodo/Glimt also operate on a budget that is a fraction of the size of Europe’s biggest clubs.
Remarkably, Knutsen’s team are also in their off-season; the Norwegian top-flight, the Eliteserien, ended on 30 November 2025 due to the winter and will only resume when spring arrives in mid-March. But, in that time, Bodo/Glimt have beaten Manchester City, Atletico Madrid and knocked out Italian giants Inter, the runaway Serie A leaders, by winning home and away.
Bodo/Glimt took a two-goal lead to the San Siro after a stunning 3-1 victory in Norway last week, where they have developed an outstanding record on the artificial surface at their 9,000-capacity Aspmyra Stadion. Then, on Tuesday night, they survived long spells of pressure before Jens Petter Hauge punished Manuel Akanji’s error to silence the San Siro.
As Bodo/Glimt started to play with confidence, Hakon Evjen added an excellent second on the counter-attack, leaving Inter with a mountain to climb even as Alessandro Bastoni pulled one back. A 5-2 victory on aggregate will not only signal a crisis at Inter, the three-time European champions, and Italian football as a whole, but it will also send shockwaves around the sport.
Bodo/Glimt's players celebrate their win at San Siro, as they reached the last-16 on their first ever season in the Champions League (AFP via Getty Images)
In Norway, they will celebrate a first Norwegian side to win a knockout tie in the European Cup or Champions League since 1987-88.
Bodo/Glimt are also the first team outside of England, Spain, Germany Italy or France to win four consecutive games against teams from Europe’s big five leagues since Johan Cruyff’s Ajax in 1971-72. Ajax went on to win the European Cup that season, too.
“Can you believe it, huh?” Knutsen said. “A team from a small town up north, it’s unbelievable and today was a special game.”
This stuff isn’t suppose to happen in Europe these days.
Trust the process - how Bodo began
Bodo/Glimt’s close-knit, team-first environment is often hailed as the key ingredient behind their remarkable journey. Head coach Knutsen, who has been in charge since 2018, has been linked with several major jobs and bigger leagues during the club’s rise, but has turned down offers to remain with Bodo/Glimt, where he recently signed a contract until 2029.
“For me, the people are the most important thing,” he told TV 2 in January. “That means more than all the trophies. You always work to win something, and that's great. But the joy of winning it together with someone means the most. There has to be an environment where people care about each other – and I feel we have created that in Bodo/Glimt.”
Hauge, Bodo/Glimt’s top goalscorer in the Champions League this season, now with six goals in nine games, is an example of that spirit. The 26-year-old was signed by AC Milan in 2020 after helping his hometown club’s early rise, before playing for Eintracht Frankfurt in Germany and Gent in Belgium as he attempted to make it at a higher level of European football.
But Hauge, upon returning to Bodo, had the same realisation as some of his team-mates: that home was the best place for him after all. It has helped fuel the sense of togetherness at a club that feels as if it has created something special.
Then there is the impact of Bjørn Mannsverk, a former fighter pilot turned mental coach whose unconventional methods are also part of the club’s story. Mannsverk walked into the club when they were in the second division of Norwegian football in 2017 but revolutionised the team’s behaviour through meditation and embracing the process, rather than focusing on results on the pitch.
“It is a fairytale, almost a miracle,” Mannsverk told The Associated Press last season. “How can you actually come from the second division in 2017 to playing Champions League… But I think it’s possible ... if you have the right mentality and you work hard over time.”
The European journey continues
Bodo/Glimt won the Norwegian top flight for the first time in 2020, repeating that success in 2021, 2023 and 2024, but it is on the European stage where their story has gone mainstream.
They produced their first major shock in 2021 by beating Jose Mourinho’s Roma 6-1 in the group stage of the Europa Conference League, becoming the first team to put six past a Mourinho defence. They also defeated Celtic in the knockout rounds, before falling to a defeat to Roma in an ill-tempered quarter-final.
After gaining more experience in European football, Bodo/Glimt built a formidable home record in last season’s Europa League run, beating Twente, Olympiacos and Lazio on their plastic pitch, before defeat to eventual winners Tottenham in the semi-finals.
A first appearance in the Champions League was not entirely going to plan after the first six matches. Ahead of hosting Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in January, Bodo/Glimt were winless and their hopes of reaching the knockout play-offs were hanging by a thread.
But Erling Haaland’s homecoming to Norway was overshadowed by a dominant performance from Bodo/Glimt, who added their biggest scalp yet. Then, two weeks later, they went to Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid and came from behind to win 2-1 and squeeze through from the league phase.
The play-off draw handed Bodo/Glimt with a daunting tie against Inter, the Italian leaders and last year’s Champions League finalists. Sensationally, their story is not done there and they will face either a rematch with City or Portuguese champions Sporting in the last-16.
‘They're taking steps - I’m so proud’
“It sounds not true but we are there, we are among the last teams this competition,” said Hauge. “So it will be really exciting to see what the next two games bring.
“It's fantastic, what we have done. I'm so proud of the group, the trainers, the medical staff. We're all in this together and we believe so much in our project.
“We got a lot of experience from this kind of situation last season in the Europa League. We knew it was going to be extremely tough today.
“But the clock was running our way, so we knew that the longer we could keep the score 0-0, the space would open and we could really punished them on the counter and we did that.”
Knutsen added: “We are in the last 16, I can't actually believe it. But the players are amazing. They're taking steps, they believe, they're working harder, so I'm so proud.”
