Five of the eight Champions League playoff ties went roughly as expected. Paris Saint-Germain had a bit more trouble separating itself from its Ligue 1 rival Monaco than predicted, but rode a 3-2 first leg win to a 5-4 aggregate victory. Newcastle demolished Qarabag, 9-3. Atlético Madrid turned a 3-3 first-leg draw around with a 4-1 second leg at home to dump out Club Brugge. Bayer Leverkusen vs. Olympiacos was a snoozer, won 2-0 on aggregate by the former. Real Madrid comfortably dispatched Benfica 3-1, with an uncomfortable amount of racism playing the starring role in the match-up. It all went pretty straightforwardly, in other words. Except for the racism, that sucked.
The other three ties provided some more excitement, though. Borussia Dortmund took a 2-0 lead from a dominant, entertaining first leg, but ran out of steam against Atalanta back in Italy, where the home side won 4-1 to squeak by on a one-goal aggregate victory. In what would normally be the biggest upset of the round, Galatasaray rocked Juventus 5-2 at home last week, and then endured a tie-leveling 3-0 Juve fight-back in the return leg before scoring two goals in extra time, the Turks advancing by a 7-5 aggregate margin. It was thrilling, messy, and featured a wonderful winning goal by Victor Osimhen, which was just about the most expected outcome in an unexpected showdown.
And yet, Galatasaray is a team with plenty of history and plenty of talent—Osimhen is a top-10 striker in his own right, and he is surrounded by former top-club starters Leroy Sané, Ilkay Gündogan, Lucas Torreira, Mario Lemina, and Davinson Sánchez—while Juve is nowhere close to its traditional perch near the top of the game. So it’s hard to paint this one as a massive upset, particularly when a little team from Norway had just finished off an evisceration so thorough and stunning that it overshadowed everything else that happened in the playoffs. Bodo/Glimt’s 5-2 aggregate dismantling of last season’s Champions League runner-up Inter Milan is the story not just of this playoff, or even a continuation of the best story of this entire campaign, but really, of recent continental soccer memory.
I can’t say it was completely unexpected, though; in our playoff preview, I did send an unheeded warning to Inter: “With that in mind, I’d still urge Inter to be careful against Bodo/Glimt. […] It’s a tough ask for the Norwegians, and they are coming off a domestic disappointment, finishing in second by one point for the 2025 season, but a crucial win at home in the first leg could be enough to see their giant-killing fairy tale run continue for one more round, at least.”
Glimt’s run through the league stage, which included victories over Manchester City and Atlético, as well as draws to Tottenham and Dortmund, was encouraging for the smallest team to move on from the first round of the competition, and a quirk of scheduling also helped matters. See, Glimt, by virtue of the Norwegian league not wanting to play matches during a Northern Europe winter, has not played a domestic league match since Nov. 30. While finishing second in the Eliteserien (by a single point!) might have dulled some of the joy that came from the Champions League, the conclusion of domestic play three months ago might have worked in Glimt’s favor. Though Inter has a comfortable lead in Serie A, it still has to focus on the league to maintain that advantage, while Glimt could devote all its energy and attention to this tie, the biggest in the club’s history.
That laser focus showed in what turned out to be a crucial win at home in the first leg last week. Glimt replicated much of its same playbook from its stunning Manchester City victory, relying on its attacking talent to capitalize on any mistakes from the favored sides, while only conceding once the other way.
The second leg on Tuesday didn’t quite follow that gameplan. Bodo/Glimt had a two-goal lead to protect at one of the most intimidating stadiums in Europe, the San Siro. It makes sense, then, that manager Kjetil Knutsen’s plan was one of controlled retreat, allowing Inter to dominate possession and the shots in hopes of fortifying its own goal. That’s a long way of saying that Glimt parked the bus, but this wasn’t a classic “underdog abandons playing actual soccer to cling to a lead” situation. Glimt still looked for opportunities to score, without sacrificing its defensive rigidity. After a first half where Inter had 74 percent of the ball and 12 shots, including one cleared off the line by Glimt center back Odin (hell yeah, brother) Bjortuft, the Norwegians got their crucial opener. In the 58th minute, Inter center back Manuel Akanji had a complete brain fart trying to dribble the ball out, losing it under minimal pressure from Ole Didrik Blomberg. The winger tried to beat Yann Sommer one on one but was denied, only for the ball to fall to former AC Milan striker Jens Petter Hauge for an easy poach:
At that point, Glimt had a 4-1 aggregate lead and a likely berth into the round of 16, but did that stop the Norwegian side from looking for more? Not for a second! The most exciting part of this team, besides how much it is punching above its weight class or how fun its attacking duo of Hauge and Kasper Hogh are (combined 10 goals and four assists during this Champions League campaign), is that its players never seem scared of the moment. The worst thing that could have happened was a quick Inter answer to keep the hope alive, but Bodo/Glimt grew into the game after its goal, shortening the possession gap and capitalizing on an increasingly desperate Inter effort. (There was another goal-line clearance, too, this time from Hogh in the 65th minute.) That push-and-pull set up the dagger. Just 14 minutes after Hauge’s opener, Glimt moved the ball from its own third down the field with a series of smooth and precise passes, before a sublime cross from Hauge landed at the foot of Hakon Evjen, who had a similarly sublime finish:
That made it 5-1 Glimt, and even a consolation Inter goal four minutes later didn’t spoil the reality that this side, tiny and full of players who came back home after failures elsewhere on the continent, was off to the round of 16. That last point is important looking forward beyond whatever happens in the next round. (Glimt will play either Sporting Lisbon or Manchester City in the round of 16, depending on Friday’s draw. I can’t imagine that this run would continue if it has to play City two more times … but maybe?) As The Transfer Flow’s Kim McCauley pointed out, a bunch of Glimt’s players are homegrown but they have also already experienced life away from Norway before returning. That makes Glimt more resistant to the ravages of European soccer below the top levels, where every talent ends up going somewhere more prestigious. The likes of Hauge, Evjen, and captain Patrick Berg have already done that and found it lacking, and since they are no longer young stars in the making but rather seasoned veterans, perhaps they will choose to stay with Glimt rather than depart once more.
That could still happen, of course, but Glimt’s best players have been down that road before, and they all have found that home is better. That home, and their effort to maintain it, has come out as one of the best 16 teams in Europe this year, and that’s not just a generous turn of phrase. At what point does this magical run go from fluky to tangible and real? I’d say around the time of Hauge’s opener on Tuesday, when it became clear that Glimt, this little team from a country with cold winters and a middling soccer history, was about to discard Inter Milan, winners of 20 Serie A titles and three Champions League trophies, directly into next season.