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What do Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper and Lady Diana have in common? On 9 September 1981 they were all beaten by Norway.
At least that is according to the iconic Norwegian radio commentator Bjørge Lillelien. His triumphant, giddy and slightly unhinged rant after Norway beat England 2-1 in a World Cup qualifier has gone down in Norwegian folklore. It has also attained something of a cult status abroad, with the Observer declaring it in 2002 the greatest bit of commentary ever.
“We have beaten England! England, the birthplace of giants!” Lillelien enthused, before listing some of said giants. Henry Cooper may seem an odd man out among the various statesmen and Lady Di, but then Lillelien was a notable boxing aficionado. “Maggie Thatcher, can you hear me? I have a message for you, in the middle of your election campaign. I have a message for you … As they say in the boxing bars around Madison Square Garden in New York: your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!”
For those last two sentences Lillelien switched to English, just in case Maggie Thatcher could in fact hear him.
At the time, Lillelien’s elation may have seemed a little excessive to some English observers. Norway were, after all, not the only team that beat England in 1981. Earlier that year they had lost to Switzerland, Scotland, Spain and Brazil, as well as drawn against Wales and Romania. The year before they had lost to Romania, Italy and Wales. They were hardly an unstoppable force. But in 1981 England had a special place in Norwegian footballing hearts that no poor run of form could diminish.
Since November 1969 the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK had been showing live matches from the English first division during the winter, when Norwegian football was on a weather-enforced hiatus. With Norway having one television channel at the time, that meant every person who wanted to watch TV on a Saturday afternoon during those months would be watching English football. And the games enthralled the nation.
“We would learn on Wednesday what game was going to be shown on NRK at the weekend, and there was a lot of excitement around that,” says Øyvind Alsaker, who will be commentating on Saturday’s World Cup quarter-final against England for the Norwegian broadcaster TV2. “Would your team be shown?”
Alsaker, born in 1969, was part of the first generation that grew up with these televised games. “You would run outside and pretend to be Keegan and Toshack and all of these heroes,” he says. But it wasn’t always the big teams shown. On 14 January 1978, for instance, NRK somehow ended up showing Mansfield taking on Southampton in the second division – which, with all due respect to the Stags, must have seemed slightly baffling to the Norwegians.
But this did lead to people in Norway forming emotional attachments to unlikely clubs. Gabriel Høyland, Erling Haaland’s great uncle who earned 23 caps for Norway, is a committed Burnley supporter. Kasper Wikestad, who commentated on Norway’s win against Brazil for NRK this week, is a Norwich fan. He was one of many Norwegians who grew up with England as his footballing nirvana. “It was the sound, the smell, the stars; it was the atmosphere, it was the chants from the stands,” he says. “It was our promised land. It felt so close, but at the same time so far away.”
If England were going through a tough spell in 1981, Norway were just not very good. “It was a Norwegian national team that hadn’t been to a tournament in any kind of way since the 1938 Olympics,” Wikestad says. “England were our idols and our reference point. For Norwegians at that time, England and English football was like a dream. How good England were, how big the stars were, everything to do with England was huge. The idea that we could beat England at football in a qualifying match, it was a totally unrealistic dream.”
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Lillelien had always been something of an entertainer. “He was a man who made boring games fun,” Alsaker says. “We would turn on the sound from the radio, and watch the game on with the TV on mute.” With Norway taking a 2-1 lead and holding on for a historic win against England, Lillelien was already fraying at the edges. As Phil Neal hacked down the local hero Tom Lund from behind Lillelien erupted, calling Neal “a pig”. “The thug Phil Neal kicks Tommy from behind! Phil ‘pig’ Neal! Start retaliating! The English have thugs both in the stands and on the pitch!”
As the seconds ticked away into added time, Lillelien felt the Polish referee, Jerzy Kacprzak, was too slow to blow the final whistle. “The referee keeps adding and adding and adding, he is on track for an English citizenship!” But just as this aspersion was cast, Kacprzak blew and Lillelien erupted again. “Norway have beaten England 2-1 at football! We are the best in the world!” And you know the rest.
Today, Norwegians are still obsessed with English football. Norwegian kids grow up dreaming of playing in England, more so than at Barcelona or Real Madrid or anywhere else. “We now have three generations of Norwegians who have received English football intravenously,” Alsaker says. On Saturday it will be his job to convey the emotion of the occasion back to the Norwegian public.
“It feels unreal. When I look at what I’ve experienced with the Norwegian national team over the last 25 years, it feels unreal that this is happening. I was thinking that reaching the round of 16 was just fantastic. And now we are playing for being one of the top four teams at a World Cup. It’s wild. It is a task I approach with great humility and a feeling of responsibility. So many Norwegians will be following this, I hope I will succeed in doing a good job.
“Norway-England, of all things. A week ago, we thought that it couldn’t get bigger than Norway-Brazil, but there you go.” For Norwegians, no opponent we face on a football pitch could ever mean more than England.
