It was a slightly ill-fitting venue for what would turn out to be the match of the season so far. With its artificial surface and small stands, several of them with no roof, Sarpsborg Stadium looks more like a training ground than the home of what is currently one of the most entertaining teams in European club football.
The modern history of that team, Sarpsborg 08, is as complex as a Egil Olsen game analysis. Football in Sarpsborg has a rich history, with the two most noticeable clubs, FK Sarpsborg and Sparta, winning 7 domestic cups between them before 1952. But after decades without a top-flight presence, a project was agreed in 1999 between all the 16 different local teams in the area to cooperate and pool together their resources to cultivate one great club to represent the city. After many false starts, with economic collapses and sporting failures, Sarpsborg 08 was born in 2008. Changing its name from FK Sparta Sarpsborg and continuing its place in the 2nd tier, they got promoted to Tippeligaen for the first time before this season. A great triumph for the club and the city, it was also a truly unique personal achievement for the defender Berat Jusufi, who would become the first player to play for his club (although under different names) in five different divisions.
While coach Roar Johansen’s formation might seem to vary (TV2’s statistical bible http://www.altomfotball.no/ has the team playing in four different formations during their five Tippeligaen games in June), he always sets his team out to play fluid, expansive and above all, attacking football. They are clearly comfortable at their home ground, having taken 13 points in their six games at Sarpsborg Stadium before the visit of Brann this Monday. They have only scored two less goals than current league leader Molde but has also conceded the most, together with Start and Stabæk.
If Sarpsborg 08 is the new incarnation of a city’s football history, Brann is football history personified in Norway. Formed in 1908, they are the only major team in Bergen, the second largest city in the country and one who supports its team passionately and completely. In a way they are Norwegian football’s perennial underachiever, only winning the league three times (lastly in 2007) and only one cup triumph in almost 30 years. With several of their high profile players leaving before the season, some Norwegian pundits were even suggesting a possible fight against relegation for the team, but such predictions were always going to be wide of the mark. Their creative output has been centred around a classic partnership, with the elegant, pacy and technically brilliant Uruguayan Diego Guastavino playing behind the marauding and direct centre-forward Kim Ojo, the young Nigerian signed from second-tiered NIL-Trysil before the season.
The two teams collided spectacularly in Sarpsborg, where the full outlay of their combined attacking powers came to the forefront. Without exaggerating, the match contained four viable candidates for goal of the season. Glenn Roberts gave Sarpsborg the lead, as he pulled in from the left wing and powered the ball past Piotr Leciejewski with a fantastic strike, the ball remaining completely still and static in the air as it flew into the goal and rebounded out again with almost the same force, after hitting the corner post at the back of the goal. Two headers on either side of half-time from Korcsmár and Mjelde would turn the match in Brann’s favour before Guastavino almost copied Robert’s earlier strike, the diminutive technician also cutting in from the left, his marvellous shot dipping and swerving over Hjulstad in Sarpsborg’s goal.
The Uruguyan’s home city of Montevideo could hardly be a bigger contrast to the tiny, northern fishing community of Steigen, but even with a population of only 2000 the latter has produced a technician of both the same size and powerful right foot. Tom Erik Breive has finally had a breakthrough in Norwegian top-flight football this season after he came to Oslo as a 16-year old in 1996. While he studied at Wang ToppIdrett, a private high-school specialising in assisting and supporting promising young athletes he joined Skeid, a club renowned for producing great talents such as Mohammed and Mostafa Abdellaoue, Daniel Braathen and Daniel Fredheim Holm. He was part of the Skeid junior team that won the F.A. Youth Cup in both 1998 and 99, but had never played in Tippeligaen before this season. But it has come at exactly the right time for Breive, as he has now finally developed into a truly consistent performer. And while his excellent right foot being a constant treat on corners and free-kicks, it’s his clever movement and technique that is often the catalyst for many of Sarpsborg’s quick and fluid attacking movements.
He can also finish those attacks as he showed two minutes after Morten Giæver had put Sarpsborg within one goal of Brann with his penalty conversion. Receiving the ball almost 30 yards out, he took one touch, turned 45 degrees and with hardly any backlift hit the ball on the half-volley, the ball going straight over Leciejewski, hitting the underside of the bar and then into the net for the equaliser. And still the best was yet to come.
Another clever pass from Guastavino at the edge of the box set Ojo through on goal, rounding first the goalkeeper and then a defender, and while he was starting to lose his balance that did not prevent him from choosing power from five yards out and facing an open goal, his shot luckily hitting the underside of the bar before finding the net. Two minutes later, Guastavino finally made it safe with a run worthy to grace any football league, anywhere. Picking the ball up on the half-way line, his blistering pace saw him going straight between two Sarpsborg players. Coming up to the corner of the penalty area, he started to go inwards by nutmegging another defender, then faking a shot to trick a fourth player before gently rolling the ball on to Rodolph Austin to side-foot it into the net and give Brann a 5-3 victory.
In a season of crazy results and unpredictable play, it was a magical goal to complete a fantastic game, all orchestrated by perhaps the best player of the league this season. Had Diego Guastavino been a few years younger, his performances this year would have seen a queue of agents around the block outside Brann Stadium, but while he turns 27 there can still be time to show off his undeniable skills at a bigger stage. Having played in Uruguay his whole career until joining Lyn Oslo in 2008, he has found his perfect match in Brann, a club defined by its love of technical dribblers and individual heroes. While Brann always comes first in Bergen, their passionate fans appreciate their players going on to perform in more famous leagues, be it Norwegian exports such as Tore Andre Flo or adopted Bergensere, such as Paul Scharner. If there is any justice in the footballing world, Diego Guastavino will be the next player to use the city called the Gateway to the Fjords as a springboard to even greater things.
