Euro 2025: Norway’s female soccer leaders blaze a trail for equality and progress
GENEVA (AP) — In the male-dominated world of soccer leadership, many of the trailblazing women have come from Norway.
The Norway team at the Women’s European Championship is captained by the first Women’s Ballon d’Or winner, Ada Hegerberg, and led by a female federation president, Lise Klaveness, who is one of just three such leaders among the 55 UEFA member countries.
Klaveness, who played for Norway’s team that was runner-up at Euro 2005, sees a decades-long tradition of the federation being progressive, promoting women and speaking out at international meetings.
Before her, there was Karen Espelund, the first woman to join UEFA’s executive committee, and Ellen Wille, whose speech at a FIFA congress helped create the Women’s World Cup.
They all worked with Per Omdal, a long-time federation president who in 2022 was awarded one of Norway’s highest civic honors to recognize his support for women’s soccer.
“We are not perfect at all,” Klaveness told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “Of course everything can be better, but I feel like I inherited something proud and value-based.”
Captain Ada
The captain of Norway’s team at Euro 2025 in Switzerland — her squad will play in a group with the host, Finland and Iceland — fits perfectly into the national tradition.
Hegerberg is a talented pioneer, winner of the first Ballon d’Or for women in 2018, and unafraid to have principles.
The Lyon forward won the award in the second season of a five-year, self-imposed absence from the national team to protest a lack of equality for women from the federation.
Even the award ceremony gave an unwanted opportunity for Hegerberg to show strong character and earn more admiration. Collecting the trophy on stage in Paris, she quickly shut down a French DJ’s provocative comment about the sexualized dance twerking.
In 2022, within weeks of Klaveness being elected, Hegerberg ended her exile.
“Ada already now sees she’s part of something bigger … the connection in history,” Klaveness told the AP, describing the captain as “a very beloved player.”
World Cup origin story
Hegerberg’s exile meant missing the 2019 World Cup in France, the eighth edition of a tournament FIFA’s all-male leadership finally launched in 1991.
Wille’s words at FIFA’s annual meeting in 1986 were key to that progress. A member of the Norwegian federation’s executive committee, her speech urging FIFA to do more for women’s tournaments was a rare female contribution to any debate at its congress.
Norway lost that first World Cup final to the United States but won the next title in 1995.
UEFA pioneer
At age 15 in 1976, Espelund was in the first wave of players when the Norwegian federation formally recognized women’s soccer. She later played for the national team.
In 2002, at a volatile FIFA congress, Espelund was a rare women in a leadership role as the federation’s general secretary alongside president Omdal.
Espelund took the platform to challenge FIFA’s embattled then-president Sepp Blatter about its fragile finances ahead of him winning re-election.
In 2011, with FIFA again in turmoil amid another controversial Blatter election and promises of governance reform, Espelund was appointed the first woman on the UEFA executive committee which she served for five years. Klaveness became the fourth in April.
Inspiring role model
Klaveness, a labor lawyer and judge, made an international impact in her first month as Norwegian federation president.
At FIFA’s congress in Qatar on the eve of the 2022 World Cup tournament draw Klaveness was alone in drawing attention to the host nation’s treatment of migrant workers and criminalization of homosexual acts, and soccer’s responsibility to acknowledge the issues. She later pushed the case at the Council of Europe for migrant workers’ families to be compensated.
Klaveness describes Omdal, a former UEFA vice president, as “still my mentor” whom she sees each week. “He really fought for a women’s league in Norway and (to) have 50% (representation) on boards.”
Now Klaveness is herself a role model for women in European soccer, including Norway’s coach at Euro 2025, Gemma Grainger.
“I feel like Lise is a great example for me and for any female, to really stand by what she says,” Grainger told the AP. “For her to stand up and talk so openly and fight for more than football is a true inspiration.”
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