How a fighter pilot’s mental techniques helped tiny Bodø/Glimt reach the Europa League semifinals
OSLO: How did an unheralded Norwegian team from a tiny town north of the Arctic Circle become one of the fairytale stories of European soccer? For Bodø/Glimt, the transformation has been underpinned by a fighter pilot who developed mental techniques for his squadron before bombing missions in Libya. Bjørn Mannsverk discovered a group of players exuding negative energy and prone to “a collective mental breakdown” when he was asked in early 2017 to join the backroom staff of a team that had just been relegated to Norway’s second tier. His task as “mental coach” at Bodø/Glimt? To make players talk openly about their feelings, lower stress levels, change their attitudes and routines about things like preparation and nutrition, and remove the stigma around mental training. Winning or losing no longer mattered. It was all about following a philosophy and culture established by Mannsverk, a former Royal Norwegian air force squadron leader whose military duties took him to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and to Libya for a NATO-led intervention in 2011.