About 150 members of Sporting Club Gjøa packed into their Sunset Park clubhouse on June 26 to watch Norway close out its FIFA World Cup group stage against France, a scene first reported by Brooklyn Paper. Norway lost 4-1. Nobody in the room seemed to mind for long.
The Vikings advanced to the knockout stage anyway, then beat Côte d’Ivoire 2-1 to reach the Round of 16 against Brazil. But the result at 850 62nd St. that night was almost beside the point. The gathering was about the club itself, which has been a Norwegian-American anchor in Brooklyn for more than a century.
Gjøa was founded by Norwegian immigrants in 1911, making it one of the oldest community soccer clubs in the country. Its youth program launched in 1918. This year about 400 kids are in clinics and another 400 in travel soccer, while the adult Sunday games run more recreational.
“We’ve been having youth programs since 1920, so that’s something we’ve been doing in Brooklyn forever,” said Jimmy Svendsen, the club’s youth athletic director.
Svendsen described the World Cup as the “ultimate” sporting event. It puts strangers from opposite ends of the earth in the same room and makes them friendly. He pointed to a match he had already attended in person.
“I was at the Norway-Senegal game, and you have Senegalese fans and Norway fans all coming together and just being friendly and nice and calm. It’s a nice thing to see in today’s world,” Svendsen said.
The clubhouse watch party drew Norway’s food industry, which uses soccer to reach kids. The Norwegian Seafood Council is the official sponsor of Norway’s men’s national team and its star striker, Erling Haaland. Its USA director, Karine Rød Haraldsson, teamed up with the cheese brand Jarlsberg to run a community soccer camp through TINE Football School in partnership with Gjøa Youth Soccer. TINE is a Norwegian food company owned by more than 7,000 dairy farmers across the country.
Haraldsson’s pitch came back to what’s on the plate.
“If they are eating a lot of seafood, they should do that, they’ll get stronger,” Haraldsson said of the players.
Svein-Egil Jørgensen, a special adviser for political affairs at TINE, said the company has sponsored the Norwegian Football Federation for more than 30 years and hosted football camps every summer for the past 28, serving more than 1.8 million Norwegian children. Some current national team players came up through them. The point, he said, was never to manufacture stars.
“The idea is that we try to keep as many kids as possible as active as possible for as long as possible, and then some of them will become top athletes,” Jørgensen said. “But the general idea is that, of course, as a small country, we cannot lose anyone in small talent pool, but also it’s a good thing for the public health. So, if they get good values, they stay active, they made friends, these are all positive effects.”
Two of the camp’s TINE Football School coaches, William and Julie, had just spent a week in Brooklyn coaching Gjøa’s youth players. At halftime, with France up 3-1, William was unbothered.
“I’m not surprised, really, because it’s the B team of Norway. We might get a tie, but I don’t think we’re gonna win,” he said, adding that Haaland coming on in the second half could still swing it. “I still think that Norway is going to the final; I stand by that.”
Leo Bourbon, a 16-year-old Gjøa youth player, watched the match rooting for Norway while his father, France native Jean Bourbon, cheered for Les Bleus. Jean Bourbon’s wife is Norwegian, and finding Gjøa’s youth program felt like a dream come true, he said.
“There was no French soccer club, now there is. But it wasn’t just the Norwegian fact, it was the fact that the club is great at what they do, and the way they teach, and their approach to philosophy of soccer including everyone, and just letting the kids on the pitch basically decide how they play,” Bourbon said, noting that the coaches lean on positive reinforcement instead of yelling.
Featured image: Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
