back in 2011, Bodø/Glimt were strapped for cash and forced into a routine popular with park footballers. They were struggling in the Norwegian second division and, as their sporting director Håvard Sakariassen put it, had “hit the wall”. Those long journeys from inside the Arctic Circle feel even more arduous when you’re doing it all yourself, and as they prepare for the visit to Manchester United, they could be forgiven for a moment to marvel at how the picture has changed.

“We didn’t have an equipment manager, so we washed our equipment at home and came to training already dressed,” says Sakariassen, who recently retired from playing and took on de facto responsibility for managing the team’s equipment. “If you compare that to our resources today, it’s a completely different world.”

It says it all that when Bodø/Glimt walk out at Old Trafford they will neither look nor feel out of place. This is their fifth consecutive season in European football and they have made some serious progress. A Roma team led by Jose Mourinho was beaten 6-1 at the Aspmyra Stadium in the 2021-22 Conference League. Celtic and, this season in the Europa League, Porto are among the other victims. When they visited two years ago, Arsenal came close. While it once had novelty value to see a club from the furthest reaches of Northern Europe and a hometown of fewer than 50,000 people bleeding the noses of big names, they now seem like a regular fixture.

“It’s been quite a journey,” says Ulrik Saltnes, a veteran midfielder who has played 370 games since joining when a return to the top flight seemed a long way off. “It’s really hard to imagine. Everything was so much smaller. There were fewer people there and the level was completely different. From a team that jumps up and down the leagues to a stable team in Europe every season since 2020 – it just doesn’t compare at all.”

That stability has coincided with the tenure of Kjetil Knutsen, a 56-year-old manager who has been linked with Premier League jobs but remains at the helm of Norway’s dominant force. Bodø/Glimt had never won an Eliteserien title until four years ago, when they pulled away at the top with a 19-point lead. They have won two more and will add one more as long as they beat Lillestrøm in a grandstand final of the domestic campaign on Sunday.

It was a triumph of club building: a success story untarnished by wealthy backers or reckless gambling. Bodø/Glimt chose and stayed true to a proactive, progressive style of football, recruiting imaginatively while staying true to their local roots. Bayern Leverkusen’s Nigerian striker Victor Boniface cut his teeth there, but the vast majority of Knutsen’s squad are Norwegian. They were able to reinvest several large transfer fees, but, as Sakariassen says: “We don’t see ourselves as a sales club.”

Instead, they are process-driven. “We don’t have any goals in the club,” says Sakariassen. “We don’t say before the season: ‘Our goal is to be number 1 or 2.’ Or: “We will win 80% of the home games.” We threw that in the trash six years ago. We just work to get better every day, do the smart things, just work hard and have one focus: making the product better.”

They succeeded. Outwardly larger clubs in Scandinavia readily accept that Bodø/Glimt has become a model for how clubs could thrive in the region. A region whose club influence on the continental stage has waned is represented by a standard-bearer few would have expected. It would be a welcome bonus for Sakariassen and his cohort if they could help raise the level of everyone around them. “I think Norwegian teams will perform well in the future,” he says. “We push each other.”

Saltnes points out that the domestic opponents have found ways to act against Bodø/Glimt that their European rivals do not yet understand. The tension in this year’s title race, with Brann one point behind, suggests as much. Last year, Knutsen’s team finished nine points ahead of the same opponents, so they may not become the kind of wrecking ball that dominates similarly sized championships while contributing little to the larger ecosystem.

However, the focus remains on themselves. Bodø/Glimt’s next local project will be the construction of a new stadium, although not beyond their financial capabilities. The charming, atmospheric Aspmyra will be replaced by a slightly larger 10,000-seat venue. At some point it will certainly be the venue for Champions League football. They should have made a remarkable debut in this season’s group stage, but after taking a two-goal lead against Red Star Belgrade in the playoffs, they suffered a 3-2 defeat on aggregate.

This close distance was another indicator of their progress. The appearance at Old Trafford will also have some personal significance for Sakariassen, who admits he is one of the many Norwegians who followed United as a youngster. But his greatest source of pride is that, against all odds, he has put his hometown at the center of the European map.

“When I travel through Europe, it is strange for me to come from Bodø and know the history, that we are a small club, that everyone knows us. It’s great for us and also to see what influence the club has in Bodø, in the north of Norway and also in Norway. For me as a Bodø/Glimt boy it is really extraordinary.”