On 14 January, the Danish Queen Margrethe leaves the throne to her son, Frederik. Over many years, the Crown Prince has had to prepare for the role, duties and expectations that await him as monarch. Now the mother thought the time was ripe. For Frederik – but also for the Queen herself. It is unknown whether it was this announcement in Margrethe’s New Year’s speech that inspired Norway’s best football club in the transition to 2024. But by hiring Gaute Helstrup two days later, Bodø/Glimt signals two obvious things. The end of an era It is most obvious that Kjetil Knutsen’s extremely successful era as Glimt coach is coming to an end. Whether he has specific plans or just wants to send a signal to Football Europe is not yet certain. But the emancipation process is now officially underway. Hiring the head coach from the Eliteserien’s bronze medalist as an assistant on paper is most of all appointing a crown prince. Glimt school’s second litter Secondly, as a natural consequence of this, Gaute Helstrup will spend the time until this actually happens attending a fairly newly established Glimt school. The first student was Kjetil Knutsen, who in 2017 was an assistant under Aasmund Bjørkan before he took over the main responsibility the following year. The rest is North Norwegian football history. BIG BROTHER IN THE NORTH: Bodø/Glimt show that they are the biggest in the north with the double signing from Tromsø. Photo: Mats Torbergsen / NTB The next task for the same learning institution is the creation of the new Glimt-Gaute, where his obvious football skills will be further cultivated in the company of the country’s most attractive club coach in a special class. In this way, Bodø’s fear that the glory days are in reality over the day Kjetil Knutsen disappears from the club will be successively mitigated. There were the two obvious reasons. There is a third as well, of the slightly more non-sporting kind, namely the signal that perhaps stings the most in this humiliating start to 2024 for the Nordics’ own Olympic city of the year: No Tromsø coach can expect more than to become an assistant when he is so lucky to come to Bodø. The arch-rival from the smaller town in the south uses cynical, albeit modern, means of power to show who is currently in a special class the strongest – and not least the richest. Mack in Polden The power of football starts and ends in the heart. If you lose that, sooner or later you will lose your connection to the team and the sport. In the eyes of the Tromsø supporters, the troll from the south is tearing the heart out of the club by running away from not only the successful coach, but also the club’s player of the year in 2023, Jostein Gundersen, who has played in TIL his entire career. The centre-back was out of contract at the turn of the year and could have come to Bodø for free, but himself demanded that Tromsø should receive an amount of a million in consideration for him. Helstrup, for its part, has a buyout clause of around one and a half million kroner. His salary in Glimt must be expected to be double this again, without any of the people involved wanting to talk about money, not surprisingly. For Glimt, this is not a problem at the moment anyway. They can afford to “explore opportunities”, as general manager Frode Thomassen termed it at Wednesday’s press conference, which can also be called historic. For the first time, an assistant coach recruitment press conference was broadcast live on national Norwegian TV. Otherwise, it is unlikely to be the new word of the year, but that is also immaterial right here. This is primarily about manifestation. Of who is the strongest, most powerful and, not least, richest. A long-time TIL supporter put this in a literary context by comparing Glimt to Hamsun’s Mack in Polden, the merchant who uses money to keep the others in the village down. PARALLELS: Knut Hamsun’s work “Landstrykeren” is used by a Tromsø supporter to portray Glimt’s spending. Photo: NTB Glimpse of genius Some in Bodø have compared this to the situation they themselves experienced for many years, where elder brother Rosenborg brought the players they wanted at all times from Aspmyra and to Lerkendal. Now it is Glimt himself who feels they can snap and point. But this is still more than an upstart’s ostentatious marking needs. It is potentially a stroke of strategic genius. For the inherent irony in the success story of Kjetil Knutsen’s reign in Bodø is that the more trophies they win and triumphs they celebrate, the greater the anxiety about what will happen on the day Knutsen decides to move south. The feeling that this will also mean the end of greatness is obvious, no matter how much more steadily you gradually build the structure on Aspmyra. A transition period, where Helstrup (47) is apprenticed to Knutsen (55), will recreate a feeling of security. In theory, the order of succession is better secured for each day they work together. TEACHER: Gaute Helstrup will be apprenticed to Kjetil Knutsen and perhaps he will take over Glimt in the future. Photo: Rune Stoltz Bertinussen / NTB When, in addition, it is the coach of Norway’s highest-scoring team who now receives assistance from the coach of the team that conceded the fewest goals, there is cause for concern in more clubs than Tromsø. And the date of King Knutsen’s departure, whether it is to take over Crystal Palace from the increasingly aging Roy Hodgson or Ajax or Lyon or another club in need of new ideas, will feel less and less like a potential sporting doomsday in Bodø. The abdicating Queen Margrethe’s election language was and is “God’s help, Folkets kærlighed, Denmark’s strength” Whether Gaute Helstrup adopts Glimt’s own slogan “Forever forever” remains to be seen. In that case, it is unlikely to be in the assistant role.
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