Soccer in Europe is not dissimilar from baseball in many ways. It's not salary capped, which means teams with bigger pockets tend to reach greater success. It's a system that exasperates itself, but every once in a while, a team will reach a perfect apex to overcome their financial means and exceed expectations. Think Leicester City in the Premier League, or Ajax reaching the Europa Cup finals.
The biggest strategy to getting over the hump for many teams is developing their young players, and hoping a bumper crop crop emerges at the same time. It worked for the Padres and Blue Jays this year, and was the reason the Royals were a World Series team in the past century.
It's tough for upstarts to break through, either in an individual league, or in the continental competitions. Rosenborg has no problem in the Norwegian domestic league. They generally win most years, and when they don't, they lose out to Molde, this year's reigning champion. This season, one of those surprise upstarts, Bodø/Glimt is in the driver's seat.
After struggling at the beginning of the season, Rosenborg made some changes in the transfer window, and have surged back up the table. Rosenborg has taken a completely different tact, and while it has been effective domestically, it remains to be seen if it will work on the international stage. They have brought back several players who departed to bigger clubs in years past: Per Ciljan Skjelbred came back from Germany, Markus Henriksen came from England and Holmar Orn Eyjolfsson returned from Bulgaria.
All three serve as a still young, still capable spine to a team that should be much better than their domestic counterparts. In their younger days, they also played on teams that made group stage runs in the Europa League. Now older and wiser, what might their expectations be?
The strategy has worked so far for RBK, but the vision is for greater things. If it works, expect it to be replicated.
