The English press is in amazement at what is about to happen tonight. – One of the world’s biggest clubs, Manchester United, welcomes little Bodø/Glimt from Norway in a Europa League match.
The BBC feels it is necessary to explain the name Bodø/Glimt and especially the slash which is quite unique.
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Bodø/Glimt were forced to change their name in the 1980s to avoid confusion.
The Norwegian team, who are currently at the top of the Eliteserien, face Manchester United in the Europa League on Thursday night – a match that will go down as one of the biggest in their 108-year history.
Ahead of kick-off, the club’s sporting director Håvard Sakariassen opened up for his remarkable rise.
“If you go back to the year in 2009-2011, the club struggled very hard financially,” he told BBC Sport. “I had my last season in 2011 as a player. In the middle of the season that year, I quit. I was old and not well. I left the locker room and went upstairs.
“At that time, the club was in such bad conditions that we didn’t have a shirt manager. We washed the training equipment at home and came to training already dressed. This was the situation at Bodø/Glimt in 2011.”
He added: “We had one person working for the A-team that autumn. It was me. I was the costume man.”
Known as “fishing hippies” because of Bodø’s cod fishing industry, the club has a number of unusual traditions.
Fans often bring large yellow toothbrushes to their games, which is a long tradition dating back to the 1970s. In fact, some supporters will conduct the song with these toothbrushes.
In addition to their traditions, the club has an interesting history. They first changed their name to Fotballklubben Bodø-Glimt in 1948 because an older club from Trøndelag had the same name.
However, in the 1980s, the hyphen between Bodø and Glimt was gradually changed to avoid confusion as hyphens were often used to distinguish teams on betting slips and in newspaper result tables.
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