SOLUTION-ORIENTED: Kjegler had to be useful since the goals were busy when Union Carl Berner goalkeeper Eric Walcott ran an extra session with teammate Lars Kveseth at Jordal on Tuesday evening. Photo: Bjørn S. Delebekk / VG
A pub is the closest you can get to a clubhouse. They don’t have a home field. The extra training before the Vålerenga match was goalless.
Jordal Wednesday 10 April at 15:23
The short version
- The 4th division club Union Carl Berner is preparing for the first round match against Vålerenga in the Norwegian football cup.
- Former football agent Lars Petter Fosdahl is a jack of all trades at Union.
- He believes there is plenty of room for a new central team in Oslo – also in top football.
- Although Union does not have a proper home ground, the team’s ambition is to win the next match and continue further in the division system.
Sea view
But Union Carl Berner does not lack visions.
The fresh Oslo club from the 4th division has a short but hectic journey – which will not stop with the cup’s NRK-broadcast first round match against Vålerenga.
Regardless of the result.
– I am not going to sit here and say that we are going to the Eliteserien or the Obosligaen. We want to win our next football match. The YMCA is rubbish, quite obviously. But if a Nordstrand team KFUM from Ekeberg/Nordstrand plays the Eliteserien in 2024 can reach the Eliteserien, then a center team in Oslo can do it, declares Lars Petter Fosdahl in Union Carl Berner.
You may have heard the name before. Lars Petter Fosdahl was a football agent for 20 years and worked closely with the clubs in the Eliteserien and eventually with player transfers to all of Football Europe.
Lars Petter Fosdahl at Jordal on Tuesday afternoon. Photo: Bjørn S. Delebekk / VG
Now the suit, shirt and VIP tickets have been replaced by a high-necked wool jumper, hiking trousers and worn artificial grass. He went from the agency profession to become festival manager in OverOslo, but now it’s a cup party Fosdahl will organize on the “football field” in Jordal.
Here, Union Carl Berner goalkeeper Eric Walcott has snuck in a few square meters of pitch. The facilities situation in Oslo football does not provide a better place for those who have played for a match against the city’s biggest club.
Two small cones make up the “goal” where Walcott stands in his own extra session before the Vålerenga match. The usual 11-man goals at Jordal are occupied by those who have regular training time this evening.
– You can be creative or give up. I choose the first. This is Oslo football in a nutshell, smiles Walcott.
The two-year-old 4th division club also renounced the “home ground advantage” in the cup match against Vålerenga. If it exists for a team that is, in practice, homeless.
Union Carl Berner has been assigned a track at Rommensletta in the series, but took the initiative for the match to be played in Enga-landJordal is located between the areas of Kampen and Vålerenga in the Old Oslo district. on Jordal.
The “away supporters” can thus catch both cup football on the artificial grass and play-off hockey in the ice hall right next door.
Lars Petter Fosdahl is the man who fixes training pitches and schedules football matches for Union Carl Berner. He is also chairman of the board, material manager and sponsor manager. All on charity.
The club’s budget of NOK 220,000 is two percent of the NOK 110 million Vålerenga Football Elite plans to spend in the Obosliga this year.
Fosdahl was also the founder of Union together with festival colleagues Thorkild Gundersen and Kosta Tsesmetsis. Then it is appropriate to go back to the beginning.
– Our starting point was to create Norway’s best pub team at Carl Berner, reports the club’s absolutely-everything-possible-man.
Lars Petter Fosdahl
They took over the place of another team from the Oslo area, Fremad Famagusta. Best known for having world chess champion Magnus Carlsen on the team.
The next move for Union Carl Berner was relegation. In the autumn of 2021, the club was at rock bottom and sick with corona, according to Fosdahl.
– That we must play against Enga in the NM is a bigger achievement than if we hits Not tonight. At the time, we were nothing, the “unionist” captioned the photo.
But then came the visions and a fake Facebook event. Two years before the reality, Fosdahl invited to – precisely – the first round of the cup against Vålerenga. To show off a hairy goal.
- This event and this digital “flyer” were created by Union Carl Berner two years ago. The exact date was the only thing that didn’t match.
This event and this digital “flyer” were created by Union Carl Berner two years ago. The exact date was the only thing that didn’t match.
Now he has more in stock.
– It comes from a desire for us to shake things up a bit in Oslo football. There is a lack of a central force, says the former football agent and rambles on:
– If all teams in the top three divisions in Oslo play at home on the same weekend, then approximately 12,000 will come and watch. When we add Vålerenga, Kåffa, Lyn, Kjelsås, Grorud and Skeid together. In Copenhagen, Gothenburg or Stockholm, it is twice as much. In general, Oslo is a somewhat stupid top football city.
– Now things have gone very quickly for us. From a dream to become Norway’s best pub team to thinking that we now want to use the momentum we have to build something.
– Is it to move up in the division system?
– So, it’s about winning the next game. And if we do that – all the time – we will end up in the 3rd division in 2025. And at Ullevaal.
Union goalkeeper Eric Walcott. Photo: Bjørn S. Delebekk / VG
– But you don’t have ambitions for the Eliteserien – or do you?
– No, but that’s what’s nice about football, then. That there is no ceiling. I think most people involved in football think that you have to move on. I cannot sit and defend that if we move up to the 3rd division, then we are happy, and then it stops there, replies Lars Petter Fosdahl.
Then he looks towards the center again:
– Most football cities in the world have central teams. FC Copenhagen, which is a new construction. Paris Saint-Germain, St. Pauli and Union Berlin. From my time as a football agent, I know that with good leadership and the courage to say things a little loudly – then things can happen!
But first there is the cup. The Union Carl Berner team that will argue against big brother is without names and faces that are known in Fotball-Norge.
– That means we don’t have renegade players, only hungry players. And it is not correct to say that we have “lucked” into the first round. We have really earned it, guarantees Lars Petter Fosdahl.