After two years of playing in the famous, outstanding, awesome Mines ParisTech’s football team, Minchester Paris, I was quite disappointed to leave to Norway… Will I be able to find a place to play there?
I knew that Norwegians were quite interested in football, and despite the fact that their national team is not among Europe’s best ones, I hoped to find there a good place to practice. And the least I can say is that I was not disappointed! Football is almost a religion here, even more than in France I would say. In every tiny town or village you are sure to find a perfect pitch, most of the time with artificial grass, and children playing on it! It is also much more mixed than in France, and a lot of young girls play football as their main sport.
Thus, trying to find a team to play with was one of the first thing I did after arriving in Norway. Football is everywhere in Norway… what about in Porsgrunn then? There are actually a lot of clubs around, and among them ODD in Skien, in the top division. Then I started to write emails to different clubs… After a first refusal from Pors Grenland Fotball (“Unfortunately, we have a full squad for 2017”, true story) I contacted Urræd, another club in Porsgrunn, and had a first training with their U19 (under 19 years old) team. To be honest, their level was a bit higher than the one we had in Minchester ^^ Then the coach told me that for the first time he planned to create a student team with the university, and that I was very welcome to join them. However today, six months later, I am still waiting for this team to be born!
Where to play then? I joined several times people just playing for fun on weekends, but I was looking for real matches and competition… That is when I discovered the Kelda Vikings.
Kelda Vikings is Kelda’s football team formed by at least 15, 20 players and among them… only one person actually working at Kelda ^^ Glenn-Ole created this team with friends a few years ago and from then a lot of new players have joined the team: friends, relatives, colleagues, interns… We play in a summer league in summer and a winter league in winter (you still follow me, right?), and have indoor trainings (almost!) every week. Summer is 7vs7 matches and winter 5vs5, indoor (just like our French UrbanFootball).
I did not really know how people played in these leagues before joining the team, and I was actually quite surprised! The level is quite high and the game pretty tough and physical, especially for me ^^ That is definitely a different way of playing from Minchester: on small fields everything is quicker, and you have to be really organized as a team to handle both defensive and attacking phases during the whole match…
But that’s what Kelda Vikings are able to do! That was really amazing to join a team where people know each other, know how to play as a team… That gave nice moves, goals and results! Indeed, despite our 40 years old average age we beat most of the times teams of 25, 30 years old guys, and won the summer league title (second division, but still!). And it is always exciting to play with a guy that remembers playing against John Carew in Norway’s junior cup…
Playing in that team was definitely amazing, and I really looked forward to Wednesdays and Thursdays to join the Kelda Vikings for a game or training. If you ever work in Kelda, do not make the mistake to try rugby with Porgsrunn Pirates, join Kelda football team instead! 😉