Rosenborg continue to do things their way

Emmet Malone on the reasons behind the Norwegian side's success.

It doesn't take long to figure out why Rosenborg are the club every Eircom League outfit sees as having shown the way to a bright and bountiful future. Since winning their first league title in a decade and a half back in 1985 the team from the town of Trondheim (population 140,000) has steadily built itself into the dominant force in Norwegian football.

This season they are well on their way to a 12th successive title but by now their only real difficulty on the domestic front is resisting the temptation to take their success for granted. Eight successive years in the group stages of the Champions League have provided the funds required to leave their domestic rivals trailing far behind. These days it is primarily how they fare in Europe that defines whether a season is considered a success.

The Rosenborg phenomenon is not unique. The likes of Skonto Riga and Maribor are similarly dominant in Latvia and Slovenia respectively. No other club, however, has been able to match the achievements of the Norwegians on the European stage where the team, managed by former Brondby boss Age Hareide, has established itself as almost unbeatable at home.

During the past eight seasons Real Madrid, Galatasaray, Paris St Germain and Celtic are among the better teams to have gone to Trondheim and lost while in the past three years Juventus, Bayern Munich and Feyenoord have all been held on Norwegian soil with Porto the only side to return home with all three points.

In 1999/2000 the club reached the second group phase of the competition when, badly out of season by the time the games were played, they were eventually overwhelmed in a group that contained Real, Bayern and Dynamo Kiev. Their reward for getting that far, though, was €6.9 million (more than three times the turnover of the biggest Irish clubs in an average season) in UEFA prize money alone with considerably more being earned through gate receipts and sponsorships.

"Our success," says the club's director of sport, Rune Bratseth, "is based on adopting a philosophy that everybody here understands and believes in and then sticking by it. On the pitch we have been playing the same way (an attacking 4-3-3 system) for 20 years now and off the pitch we do things our own way too, we are very open with people to the point where anyone, a journalist or a supporter, can come to our club house after training and sit down to talk with the players, coach or directors of the club."

Considerable revenue has been generated through selling players to bigger sides abroad with John Carew departing for Valencia, Andre Bergdolmo heading for Ajax and Bjorn Otto Bragstad joining Derby County in the summer of 2000 alone.

Much cheaper replacements have been sourced, almost invariably at home, and the surplus has helped to build a new 22,000-capacity stadium as well as training and other facilities that would be the envy of much wealthier clubs.

"Selling players has been important for us," says Bratseth, the former Norwegian international who played for the club during the 1980s, "but four, five, six players have stayed with us throughout our successful period and that has been just as important."

For some, he says, Rosenborg was a stepping stone to greater things. Even now the club's average wage is only around €120,000 a year.

"A single player at Inter Milan," he observes, "could earn more than our whole team so it is natural that some would want to move on."

With the game in recession there are not so many big money moves on offer. The club's transfer revenue has dropped but, ominously for Bohemians, over the past couple of years the club has retained its best players.