Top Gun of Scandinavia - combat pilot, the key to Bodo/Glimt

How did a little-known Norwegian team from a small town north of the Arctic Circle become one of the most remarkable fairy tales in European football? For Bodo/Glimt, the transformation was built around the work of a combat pilot who had developed mental techniques for his squadron before bombing missions in Libya.

When Bjorn Mannsverk was called to join the coaching staff in early 2017, the team had just been relegated to Norway’s second division. He found a group of players radiating negative energy and prone to what he called a “collective mental collapse.”

His role as the club’s “mental coach” was to get players to speak openly about their feelings, reduce stress levels, change attitudes and routines around training and nutrition, and remove the stigma surrounding mental training. Wins and losses became secondary.

Everything boiled down to following the philosophy and culture Mannsverk had established — as a former Royal Norwegian Air Force squadron leader whose military duties had taken him to Afghanistan and Libya. The results were extraordinary.

After securing an immediate return to Norway’s top flight, the team — located more than 1,000 kilometers north of Oslo in the fishing town of Bodo, with around 60,000 inhabitants — went on to win four of the last five league titles.

It all started in 2020 with the first championship in the club’s history, founded in 1916. Bodo/Glimt has also made headlines in European competition in recent seasons, notably a 6–1 demolition of José Mourinho’s Roma and a run to the Champions League Round of 16 in the current season after victories over Manchester City, Atletico Madrid, and Inter Milan.

As a military pilot for over 20 years, Mannsverk and other members of his squadron had been part of a mental training project focusing on meditation and “daily repetition of tedious tasks, but with 100% attention.” This meant that, when he found himself in Libya the following year, he had the mental capacity to handle the dangerous missions entrusted to him. The squadron’s mantra — “train the way you intend to fight” — proved successful.

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Given that Bodo had previously hosted a NATO airbase, it was a fortunate coincidence that the club’s management came across members of the squadron just as they were searching for a “silver bullet,” as Mannsverk called it, to improve the team’s mental resilience. This gave birth to a project fully embraced by coach Kjetil Knutsen upon his appointment in 2018. Since then, Bodo/Glimt hasn’t looked back.

Mannsverk’s influence is evident in the team’s overall behavior, even though he admits that the players have now internalized the principles to the point where they make decisions themselves — like a rotating group of eight captains sharing leadership duties. Or when the players gather in a circle — what Mannsverk calls the “Bodo/Glimt ring” — after conceding a goal to talk through what happened and support each other. Or in the fact that the players set no specific targets, other than striving to be the best version of themselves.