Why Dominant Teams Don’t Always Make for the Best Transfer Targets: the Curious Case of Bodø/Glimt

Neel Shelat looks at one of Norway’s most successful recent teams and asks why many of the players do not seem able to replicate their feats elsewhere

With four league titles in the last five years, Bodø/Glimt have firmly established themselves as the dominant team in Norwegian football right now. They have not done badly on the continental front either, reaching the quarter-finals of the UEFA Conference League, the Europa League group stage and the final qualifying round for the Champions League in recent seasons. This is impressive enough for a team that was in the second tier as recently as 2017, but the fact that Glimt built up to this success without excessive spending makes the achievement all the more outstanding.

Long-serving head coach Kjetil Knutsen (he joined in 2018) is arguably the key figure behind Glimt’s recent rise. He has often been linked with moves to a top team in one of the stronger European leagues but has chosen to stay put thus far. Of course, a good few of his players have gone down that route, but interestingly, very few have enjoyed great success.

Certainly relative to the team’s success on the domestic and continental stages, Bodø/Glimt’s best departees have rather disappointed after moving to a bigger stage. Victor Boniface has been the only slam dunk success in recent years as most others have not lived up to expectations after making a step up. This trend surely warrants closer investigation.

Before delving into it, we should quickly clarify the scope of this piece. The top 10 European leagues refer to top flights sorted by aggregate Transfermarkt values. So, that includes the big five leagues as well as Portuguese Primeira Liga, Eredivisie, Süper Lig, Belgian Pro League, and Russian Premier League. The English Championship, as well as top American leagues, have been excluded because of a lack of transfers from Glimt.

Bodø/Glimt’s Dominant Position in Eliteserien

To understand why Bodø/Glimt’s players have largely not done well in stronger leagues, it is important to first understand the club’s position in the context of their league. Their titles alone are a testament to just how successful they have been in the last five years, but the manner in which they have achieved this success is important to analyse.

As aforementioned, Glimt certainly did not buy their way to success. However, they have gained the financial capacity to become one of Eliteserien’s biggest spenders lately after making some big sales thanks to their exploits on the domestic and continental fronts. So, they have had the most valuable squad in the league (by Transfermarkt’s calculations) in every season since 2022.

Having a strong squad is one thing but making the most of it is another. Knutsen’s side have unshakeably stayed at the top thanks in no small part to their dominant style of play. Between 2020 and 2023, their average possession figure in the league hovered around 61%. Last term, it crept up to 63%.

As the Norwegian tactician’s Coach ID radar shows, he likes his side to be extremely patient with the ball. They use quite a positional 4-3-3 system in which the back four and defensive midfielder circulate a great deal of possession as they try to creep up the pitch, thus establishing territorial domination. Then, they try to break through opposition blocks centrally, utilising quick changes in tempo and slick passing to create chances.

This ‘Full Control’ approach requires quite a specific set of roles all over the pitch. While Knutsen obviously tweaks things to suit his squad, he generally likes to have heavily ball-playing centre backs, versatile full backs who regularly move infield, a deep-lying playmaker in defensive midfield, two quite high number eights who support the dynamic wide wingers and line-leading, box-crashing striker.

Dissimilarities to Top 10 League Buyers

At the time of writing, Bodø/Glimt are 311th in TransferLab’s ClubStrength+ global men’s club rankings, making them a Tier 3 club. So, the logical next step for their best players is a Tier 2 club. In Europe, teams in this category include the likes of Club Brugge, Hoffenheim, FC Twente, Osasuna, Genoa, Auxerre, and Famalicão.

While this is a diverse set of clubs broadly ranging from mid-table big five league teams to upper-table sides from the other leagues in our sample set, one thing they all have in common is that they are not in a position to adopt an incredibly dominant style of play. Even a team like Club Brugge face a great deal of strong opponents in the ever-competitive Belgian Pro League, so the other mid-table sides certainly have no chance. In practice, of course, these teams use vastly different approaches from Club Brugge’s more possession-based style to Osasuna’s inextricable directness.

So, a player transferring from Glimt to a top 10 league team will inevitably be required to operate in a different tactical context, one that very likely will not replicate the very specific roles in Knutsen’s system. This is the first thing potential buyers have to be cautious about because it means their scouting will require extra contextualisation as they must attempt to understand whether the player in question has the right traits to suit their system.

An additional difference that might be overlooked is the playing surface. The cold Norwegian climate leaves most teams with no choice but to use artificial turf. In the 2025 season, for example, only a quarter of Eliteserien grounds will have natural pitches. By contrast, the overwhelming majority of venues in Europe’s top 10 leagues have natural grass pitches.

There is a lot of research out there on the potentially heightened injury risk on artificial turf, but very little work has been done on the impact of surface types on tactical and technical factors. However, some research in Sweden over 15 years ago found that “there were fewer sliding tackles on artificial turf than natural grass. There were more short passes and midfield-to-midfield passes on artificial turf than natural grass.” This would suggest that Glimt’s style of play is better suited to turf, further reinforcing their dominant position in Norway. Obviously, that advantage is almost certainly lost when a player moves abroad, so that could be another minor reason why Glimt’s departees have underperformed in the big leagues.

Can the Glimt Premium Be Worth It?

The individual-focused nature of the transfer market goes against some of the core values of a team sport. In an ideal market, a player would be evaluated solely for their own traits, strengths and weaknesses.

However, it is simply impossible to strip away all external factors in football. Therefore, a player playing for a title-winning team is inevitably valued at least slightly higher than the same player performing at the same level for a relegation-battling side. While this may be largely due to reputational factors, as well as a buffing of metrics in platforms that don’t adjust for opposition strength (unlike TransferLab, which does exactly this), there may be some intangible value to buying players accustomed to winning, and who therefore bring that mentality with them.

So, Glimt’s success alone puts something of a premium on their players. Add to that all the other factors we have analysed, and it becomes quite easy to see why they can consistently strike favourable sale deals. Unsurprisingly, then, all but one of their major sales in our sample set (between 2020 and 2023) have earned them higher transfer fees than the player’s Transfermarkt value.

There is an asterisk next to Botheim because his contract was actually cancelled by Krasnodar due to the war in Ukraine (Krasnodar play in the Russian top tier) and he was then picked up by Salernitana on a free, although his market value was still deemed to be €4m at the time.

In the long run, only a couple of these players have gone on to be successful in transfer market terms. Victor Boniface is the obvious outlier, while Jens Petter Hauge’s profitable sale and increased market value can largely be put down to the stature of the club that signed him since he played less than 900 minutes in an AC Milan shirt across all competitions. Among the others, the two who were subsequently sold moved for lower transfer fees, while the rest have seen their Transfermarkt value drop since leaving Bodø.

Looking at minutes played, the story is similarly unsuccessful.

Player	Date of transfer	Buying club	% league mins played for buying club next 18 months	Notes
Håkon Evjen	01/01/20	AZ	9.5	COVID affected 19/20
Jens Petter Hauge	01/10/20	AC Milan	15.2	Only 12 months, then went on loan
Patrick Berg	01/01/22	RC Lens	15.4	Only 8 months then returned to B/G
Erik Bothheim	07/07/22	Salernitana	21.7	Assessing Salernitana period as released by FC Krasnodar – see above
Victor Boniface	02/08/22	USG	80.2	Stayed at USG for one season then moved to Leverkusen and plays regularly
Joel Mvuka	31/01/23	FC Lorient	12.0	Initially loaned back to B/G then loaned to Young Boys, so only around for half a season for Lorient, but finally playing regularly in Ligue 2
Hugo Vetlesen	03/07/23	Club Brugge	58.7	None

Joel Mvuka could be viewed as more of a development signing, and went on two loans in the first 18 months after his move to Lorient; he has just over 800 minutes so far in Ligue 2 this season but at 22-years-old has yet to realise his potential. But of the remaining transfers, only two could really be seen as successful.

Obviously a couple of the players have already returned to Glimt and are in the team’s current squad. One of the returnees is club captain Patrick Berg, who left for Lens in 2022 after standing out as the deep-lying midfielder in Knutsen’s system.

However, he found himself in a very different team without an overly similar role as Franck Haise’s side used a very different midfield configuration. Of course, he was making quite a big step up by joining a club that was consistently competing for the continental spots in the French Ligue 1, so the move always was a significant risk.

Erik Botheim left Bodø in the same window as Berg after registering over 30 goal involvements in 2021.

His move to Krasnodar failed for reasons beyond his control but he did go on to join a big five league club in the subsequent summer. However, the Norwegian striker’s time at Salernitana was anything but successful as he just scored once in close to 40 appearances. He returned to Scandinavia with Malmö in 2024 and found his scoring touch again, netting 19 times last year.

Hugo Vetlesen is another one of the many players whose Transfermarkt value has dropped after a move away from Bodø, but his transfer has been relatively successful as he has played close to 5,000 minutes for Club Brugge. Perhaps the main reason behind that is that they refashioned him from a very attack-minded high number eight in Norway…

… to a box-to-box midfielder in Belgium.

Having paid a transfer fee of €7.75m, Club Brugge should be satisfied with this signing. The way they integrated him into their system is something other clubs would do well to replicate when targeting Glimt’s players.

All things considered, it would be inaccurate to suggest that European clubs cannot make good signings from Bodø/Glimt, but it seems clear that they ought to be a little more careful and thorough in their scouting and evaluation. The right player can surely go on to succeed for the right team, but finding that fit requires digging through a good deal more than meets the eye, and may necessitate imagining a new tactical role for the player based on the key attributes they have already demonstrated.

Eliteserien on the whole has quite a good track record of developing domestic and foreign talents and providing them with a good platform for a successful step up, so the league is in an interesting position where its most successful team is far from its best exporter. Using the same sample set for other clubs in the league, we find that buying clubs have made an aggregate profit of over €60m with subsequent sales. The likes of Antonio Nusa, Gift Orban, and Osame Sahraoui have contributed to that tally, while others such as David Datro Fofana and Akor Adams could well add to it in upcoming windows.

Player	Selling Club	Transfer Date	Age at the time	Buying Club	Transfer Fee (€)	Transfermarkt Value at the time (€)	Next Transfer Fee (€)	Current Transfermarkt Value (€)
Kristian Thorsvedt	Viking	03/01/20	21	KRC Genk	1.50m	1.00m	10.15m	9.00m
Birger Meling	Rosenborg	06/07/20	26	Nîmes Olympique	1.00m	1.20m	3.00m	3.50m
Jørgen Strand Larsen	Sarpsborg 08	09/09/20	20	FC Groningen	1.10m	700,000	12.40m	27.00m
Antonio Nusa	Stabæk	31/08/21	16	Club Brugge	5.70m	400,000	21.00m	28.00m
David Datro Fofana	Molde	01/01/23	20	Chelsea	12.00m	7.00m	N/A	8.50m
Casper Tengstedt	Rosenborg	11/01/23	22	Benfica	7.00m	3.50m	N/A	7.00m
Osame Sahraoui	Vålerenga	31/01/23	21	SC Heerenveen	2.60m	2.00m	8.00m	12.00m
Gift Orban	Stabæk	31/01/23	20	KAA Gent	4.60m	1.00m	14.00m	10.00m
Christopher Bonsu Baah	Sarpsborg 08	06/07/23	18	KRC Genk	5.20m	1.20m	N/A	6.00m
Akor Adams	Lillestrøm SK	07/08/23	23	Montpellier	4.50m	4.00m	N/A	9.00m

It is worth noting that we have left out all transfers completed in 2024 due to the relatively short intervening time period, but Glimt’s track record does not look on course to improve. Club-record sale Albert Grønbaek’s move to Rennes always looked rather doomed to fail due to the questionable tactical and stylistic fit as well as the French side’s general instability, and he has just completed a loan move to Southampton, another team in difficult period. Faris Moumbagna is yet to get going in Marseille, and that will not change anytime soon due to his ACL injury.

On the whole, it would seem that there is more value to be found in players at other Eliteserien clubs. These teams are largely more tactically similar to potential buyers as well, so scouting their players should be relatively more straightforward.

While Bodø/Glimt definitely should not be completely ignored (not least because superstars like Victor Boniface can come through the club), European teams must look beyond the simple suggestion that a winning team’s players are the ones worth buying. Another possibility, yet to be tested, is that an elite team with a dominant position in their league might be exactly the sort of side a Bodø/Glimt player could fit.

Stats courtesy Transfermarkt and FotMob.

Header image copyright IMAGO / NTB / Mats Torbergsen