𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

“And you’re laughing too, eh?” Cristian Chivu said in astonishment.

It was his “funny how” moment.

The night before the second leg at San Siro, a Norwegian reporter wanted to know if the Inter coach thought going out to Bodo/Glimt in the Champions League play-off round would be a disgrace. He highlighted the population of Glimt and the size of their stadium. Then he chuckled, as if it made a mockery of Inter

“Well done,” Chivu said, the sarcasm heavy in his Romanian accent. He took a dim view of the amusement the reporter found in schadenfreude.

“Unlike you, we respect our opponents,” Chivu said. “We have great respect for what they did to us, to Atleti in Madrid, to City and to Dortmund

“Bodo show that with a healthy project and a clear set of ideas, you can carry on a beautiful thing.”

It’s five years since Bodo made a name for themselves in Italy

Back in 2021, Roma’s 6-1 humiliation in the Arctic Circle not only left Jose Mourinho red-faced, it led to one of the most clipped-up moments in sports television in recent Serie A history

Paolo Di Canio, the former Lazio skipper turned pundit, couldn’t help himself on Sky Italia. “They’re salmon farmers,” Di Canio said. “Salmon farmers!” The assumption was Bodo/Glimt would rapidly fade away and only the stain of Roma’s defeat would last.

It was, as Chivu still felt obliged to point out, a misjudgement.

Bodo/Glimt, pictured here during a 2-2 away to Roma in November 2021, beat the Serie A side 6-1 a month earlier (Paolo Bruno/Getty Images)

Bodo have earned the right to be taken seriously. After beating Roma twice in the Conference League in 2021-22 (in addition to one draw and one defeat in Rome), they upset Di Canio’s Lazio in the Europa League last year, en route to the semi-finals. It remains no small miracle in the current economic landscape of European football

Monied vultures have circled Bodo. Inter’s cousins Milan swooped for Jens Petter Hauge after their last visit to San Siro

The move did not work out for Hauge. But on Wednesday, he was back under the red girders of the Giuseppe Meazza and made himself a Milan folk hero anyway.

Having scored in Bodo’s 3-1 win last week, he pounced on Manuel Akanji’s mistake and, in a personal derby of sorts, scored the opener this week too, silencing everyone at San Siro apart from what’s left of the ultras in the Curva Nord. Even they went quiet when Hakon Evjen doubled Bodo’s lead and made it 5-1 on aggregate.

Hauge, for what it’s worth, has slotted back in at Bodo. The coach Kjetil Knutsen is the same, as is the ethos and culture of this club

That’s what admirers of Bodo’s project have been unable to buy. It’s what has kept them competitive in defiance of finance.

Hauge celebrates scoring against Inter (Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)

Much has been made of the artificial surface and the Arctic conditions at the Aspmyra as if they are a leveller. The pitch and the cold posing as great a challenge as Knutsen and his agile players. But in addition to shocking Manchester City at home in the league phase, they beat Atletico away.

This has been a season of ups and downs for Inter.

They are 10 points clear in Serie A despite losing to Juventus in August, Napoli in October and Milan in November. Inter’s performances, it must be said, didn’t deserve those results. When the trend in big domestic games recently reversed, it did not without controversy.

The Derby d’Italia, in which they prevailed 10 days ago, was only settled in their favour in the last minute, after an entire half with a numerical advantage following Pierre Kalulu’s scandalous red card.

The uproar caused by the Alessandro Bastoni dive that hoodwinked the referee was so great, Italy’s former Prime Minister Enrico Letta tweeted he should not be called up for Italy’s World Cup play-off against Northern Ireland in March.

It was a not inconsiderable distraction in the build-up to last week’s first leg in Glimt. Lautaro Martinez’s injury there was an inconvenience but not an insurmountable one if you believe the hype around Francesco Pio Esposito or trust in Ange-Yoann Bonny, who has scored more league goals in half the playing time of the promising Italian.

Both back-up strikers have offered more, for instance, than Marko Arnautovic and Mehdi Taremi did in Inter’s run to the 2025 final in Munich.

Denzel Dumfries, the wing-back who starred in the semi-final against Barcelona last April, has not played in four months. Out of contract in the summer, Inter are having to move on from him. Dumfries’ dependable understudy Matteo Darmian has been dogged by injury all season. Luis Henrique, a summer signing from Marseille who, like Esposito, Bonny, Bisseck and Petar Sucic, was brought in to rejuvenate the team, is still feeling his way, timidly.

That list of players is illustrative of the depth Inter have on paper. Chivu, whose coaching background was largely in Inter’s youth set-up, has been praised for fast-tracking their integration. Bisseck, for instance, looks more established. Sucic has shown flashes of real quality. Gigi Buffon, no less, was on a podcast this week, adding his voice to those declaring Esposito to be the next big thing.

Francesco Pio Esposito challenges for a header against Bodo (Andreas SOLARO / AFP via Getty Images)

But the bedrock has cracked a little this season. Francesco Acerbi, one of the heroes against Barcelona, has lost his place, as has Stefan De Vrij. Two thirds of the midfield that reached two Champions League finals in three years, Hakan Calhanoglu and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, have been intermittent presences, compensated by the form of Piotr Zielinski. He has had to cover for both. Nicolo Barella has also been a shadow of himself.

Chivu is also still learning. Only this time last year, Parma hired him in a state of emergency. It was his first job in senior football and he acquitted himself well, keeping Parma up.

Inter was, undeniably, a step-up, though. Did the job come too soon? The club doesn’t feel that way. There’s an appreciation this was no easy brief. Simone Inzaghi did a tremendous job these past four years. He left near the end of a long season that wasn’t even over. Chivu stepped into the breach at the last minute as Inter flew to the U.S. for the Club World Cup. He had to pick up a team that had lost the league on the final day and, worse still, was still reeling from a 5-0 defeat in the Champions League final. He then had to deal with the fallout of Lautaro calling out a team-mate for a lack of commitment and the president Beppe Marotta naming the player as Calhanoglu.

It looked like the dressing room had split at the end of a cycle. If you’ve forgotten all that then it is even more credit to Chivu, as Inter have, broadly and perhaps unexpectedly, kept winning.

“We’re scoring two goals a game. We’ve won 21 games in the league and five in the Champions League and we’re top in many different things,” Chivu reminded everyone on the eve of the second leg against Bodo. Regrets? Inter have more than a few. Darmian and Lautaro hit the post last week. Marcus Thuram missed a presentable one-on-one this week. “Probably not being able to break the deadlock and make it 1-0 gave them the mental comfort to do certain things, knowing that we were forced to score two goals to take it to extra time,” Chivu said.

Making the round of 16 would have brought Inter’s earnings to at least €82million (£72m; $97m) for the season in the Champions League. Tuesday could have been avoided, of course, if only Inter had finished top eight, as they were on course to do half-way through the league phase. After winning their first four games, they then lost three of the next four. Those defeats largely mirrored what happened in Serie A, as Inter were, to some degree, unfortunate to come up short in the big games. A stoppage time corner was the difference away to Atletico. A soft penalty went against them in Liverpool’s visit to the Meazza. The only team that truly outclassed them were the ‘winners’ of the league phase, Arsenal, who won every game.

“This is the difference,” Barella told Sky Italia. “When you don’t go through (as part of the top eight) for a single point because of a penalty given against you in the 90th minute (for Liverpool) then you would have been able to save yourself two games and an away game in a place like Bodo. That’s football and the new Champions League.”

Bodo, as Chivu said, had more energy. He remarked on how many games Bodo had played in 2026, as they went into the tie: four compared with Inter’s 12. The out-of-sync nature of Scandinavian seasons, which aren’t underway again by the time the Champions League league phase finishes, has often been cited as a limitation on the progress of their teams in Europe, as they tend to undercooked. But, as they showed last season by making the Europa League semis, not Bodo. It has not held them back.

To lose to Knutsen’s side not once but twice and to concede five goals in the process was, in Chivu’s words, a source of “bitterness”. Asked before the game where Bodo would finish in Serie A, Federico Dimarco seemed lost for words. “Good question,” he said. “What can I say? You don’t beat Atleti and City by chance.”

Still, some on social media declared it Inter’s worst elimination in Europe since IFK Goteborg in 1987, Malmo in 1990 and Helsingborg in 2000. But people forget Frank de Boer and Hapoel Be’er Sheva in 2016. That was in the midst of Inter’s biggest rivals, Juventus, winning nine league titles in a row and reaching two Champions League finals. It was in the midst of six years without qualifying for the Champions League. Since then, Inter have been spoiled.

As far as hurt goes, this does not come remotely close to what happened in Munich in May. There were no tears on the metro from San Siro back to the city centre afterwards. Only anti-Milan songs. At least Inter had won at the weekend while Milan lost. At least Milan won’t, it seems, be adding a second star to their shirts in the summer to commemorate a 20th league title. At least Inter, barring a collapse, will claim a 21st at their expense. At least they won’t lose another title on the final day like in May and in 2022.

“And you’re laughing too?”