You know what I love about soccer? What I absolutely love? It's that on any given day, with the right belief and execution, 11 against 11 means anything is possible.

Let me tell you about Bodø/Glimt, a club from a town of 50,000 people in Norway, above the Arctic Circle, where winter temperatures make Green Bay look like a tropical vacation. This is not Manchester. This is not Madrid. This is a place where the sun doesn't rise for months at a time.

And yet, these guys just went on a Champions League run that has the entire soccer world standing up and taking notice.

They beat Manchester City. They knocked off Atlético Madrid and Inter Milan. After making it out of qualifying rounds for the first time in club history, they went straight to work dismantling European giants. They finished ninth in the Europa League league phase, then systematically eliminated Twente, Olympiacos, and Lazio before falling to eventual champions Tottenham in the semifinals.

Let that sink in. A club from the Arctic Circle made the European semifinals.

Jens Petter Hauge, the local kid who came home to his boyhood club, said it perfectly: "One of the most beautiful things about football is that no matter how small the town you're from or how cold it is here during the winter, when the ref blows their whistle, it's 11 against 11. Anything can happen if we just believe in ourselves," he told FotMob.

Hauge delivered on that belief, scoring four goals with one assist in his last five Champions League matches. The 26-year-old winger returned to in January 2024 and became the heart of this magical run.