When a group of boys from a small town on the coast of Norway began playing for the same youth soccer club, there was no way of knowing where any of them would end up in 20 years.
The club was free and open to everyone. The teams cared more about having fun than winning—and barely kept score. Inside a small dome where they could practice year-round, through Scandinavian winters and darkness, the kids of Bryne FK played without pressure. Their volunteer coaches preached a simple philosophy: “As many as possible, for as long as possible, and as good as possible.”
In other words, the least American way possible.
But unlike the American method of raising soccer talent, this one actually worked. Of the 40 boys on that club team, 35 kept playing from childhood through adulthood. Six turned pro. Five were selected for youth national teams.
And one grew up to be the most intimidating soccer player in the entire world.
When Norway stares down England on Saturday with the hopes of rowing into the World Cup semifinals for the first time, the smallest country left in the tournament will be led by a humongous goal machine named Erling Haaland. With his golden ponytail, dry sense of humor and uncanny ability to pulverize soccer balls, the 6-foot-5 superstar has established himself as a World Cup sensation—and Norway’s largest ambassador.
But the most Norwegian thing about this man from the fjords who looks and plays like a Viking is how he was raised as a boy.
Haaland grew up in a low-cost, high-participation system of youth sports that couldn’t sound any more radical to American ears.
“It was always that everybody should play equally—that everybody should have fun,” said a former teammate. “Winning matches at a young age was not important.”
The son of a former English Premier League pro and champion heptathlete, Haaland spent his early years in Bryne, his parents’ hometown of 14,000 people.
As it happens, his time playing for Bryne’s youth club coincided with one of the most insightful scientific investigations ever published about Norway’s sports model.
This study of kids who were the same age from the same community began about a decade ago, long before it was obvious that the cohort had produced the greatest Norwegian soccer player of all time.
A sports scientist named Martin Erikstad had heard about a place that was nurturing talent while keeping everyone happy, so he set out to understand Bryne’s secrets. He collected data, reviewed practice schedules, interviewed the club’s players and coaches—and found an explanation for Haaland’s success.
“To perform at the highest level in the most popular and competitive sport in the world, you need a mix of beneficial genetic profile,” he said, “and an environment that is near-optimal.”
In the environment of Norway, participation matters more than trophies. Norwegians are famously born wearing skis and skates, but two-thirds of the country’s boys are still wearing soccer boots when they’re 11 years old. The nation is so committed to its egalitarian ideals of social enjoyment, proper development and sport-for-all that kids aren’t even sorted by talent until they’re 13. By then, the most precocious Americans are already burning out.
Only after Norwegians have sampled a bunch of different sports do they specialize in one. Haaland, for example, also grew up cross-country skiing and playing handball while destroying records in what might have been his best sport of all: the long jump.
Once he was done flying across snow and leaping into sandpits, he finally committed to the sport that was in his blood. His father Alf-Inge had also played at Bryne before moving to Nottingham Forest, Leeds and Manchester City, where Erling can now be found terrorizing defenses across Europe.
But back in the 2000s, Haaland and the Bryne kids had organized practices once or twice a week throughout grade school. The rest of the time, they were playing on their own. Even when the formal training ramped up, they developed individual skills before narrowing their focus to positional expertise.
The only thing more formative in their development than the club’s training structure was its infrastructure.
When they were about 5 years old, Bryne put up an indoor facility in the middle of town that was always unlocked and easily accessible. The timing couldn’t have been better. A soccer dome opening in the hometown of Erling Haaland when he was a toddler was the equivalent of the Cavern Club opening in Liverpool when The Beatles were teenagers.
Haaland and his friends spent every weekend morning on that turf field, partly because they weren’t spending weekends in the back of minivans. American teams are constantly dragging parents to tournaments several hours away. Norway’s youngest teams barely travel at all, playing their matches against local clubs.
And those matches are so deeply Norwegian that kids might as well swap their orange slices for brown cheese.
But now that a few million people in Norway do care about whether Haaland’s team wins or loses, the national philosophy hasn’t changed.
As his youth coach back home in Bryne once put it: “We don’t rate human worth based on whether you are good or bad at kicking a ball.”
Write to Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com and Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com
