Two major u-turns, first regarding the boycott of the World Cup in Qatar, the second about VAR, has made Lise Klaveness public enemy number one among Norwegian supporters.
By Lars Johnsen
On 29 January, at a press conference held at the Solskjær lounge at Ullevaal Stadion, the national arena, the Norwegian FA (NFF) president Lise Klaveness took the latest step in her journey from champion of democracy and transparency to the exact opposite in the eyes of many Norwegian football fans.
Three years previously, then as the newly elected president of the NFF, she sent shock waves through the football world. From the podium at the Fifa congress in Doha, using her own story from a football-mad little girl to national team player as a backdrop, she spoke up against corruption and human rights abuses in the name of the game she had fallen in love with as a child.
“Our game can inspire dreams and break down barriers. But as leaders we must do it right, to the highest standards”, she told a room more accustomed to superficial pleasantries than delegates speaking up for the weak and vulnerable.
“In 2010, the World Cup was awarded by Fifa in unacceptable ways with unacceptable consequences. Human rights, equality, democracy, the core interests of football, were not in the starting eleven until many years later.”
It was as close to a no holds barred, take no prisoners approach you can get in the universe of the world’s highest football officials.
The photograph of the ginger-haired mother of three, openly lesbian married to a woman, in a country where homosexuality is a crime, walking back to her seat to the gaze of aging Fifa men in suits became an instant classic.
The fact that she could enter the podium and speak up against football’s darkness was a result wholly down to Norway’s active football supporters and a movement that had swept the country’s terraces, pubs and lunchrooms – a potential boycott of the Qatar World Cup by the men’s national team.
An extraordinary NFF congress was held in June 2021 to decide this matter. The pro-boycott side didn’t win, but a motion from the floor, by Martin Paulsen from SK Trane, a small community club in Bergen, would later pave the way for Lise Klaveness’ international breakthrough.
The motion instructed the NFF president to voice criticism of Fifa at the next Fifa congress – and it passed. Whoever would be president in 2022 would have to speak up in Doha.
“Weigh heavily”
On 29 January, football lovers took extended lunch or coffee breaks to take in the presser’s live stream to hear Klaveness and her board’s recommendation to the 2025 NFF congress, to be held the weekend 1-2 March, regarding keeping or abolishing VAR.
The preceding week, Norsk Toppfotball (NTF), the organisation representing the 32 clubs in the top two men’s divisions of the football pyramid, had voted, and decided, it was time to scrap VAR. The majority was 19-13. VAR is only used in the top flight Eliteserien, and among clubs who have played with VAR the vote was 13-6.
Despite reassurances that whatever the NTF decided would weigh heavily on what Klaveness would recommend to congress, she chose to ignore it.
Instead Lise Klaveness, and a unanimous NFF board, recommended VAR be kept and voted over at this year’s congress. It would be decided not by the clubs affected by it, but by small grassroots clubs from towns and villages scattered around this sparsely populated land, with no hope nor ambitions to ever play in a league where VAR is used. The decision had supporters choke on their open-top brown-cheese sandwiches.
To understand why and how Lise Klaveness has gone from hero to zero among many of Norway’s football lovers, we must look at what made her, the workings of the country’s football democracy and the doublespeak of Norwegian football’s top brass.
Boycott Qatar
Lise Klaveness played 73 games for the national women’s team, scoring nine times. She is a lawyer by trade, and has worked as an attorney, judge and a football pundit for the state broadcaster NRK. In 2018 she became NFF’s director of elite football.
As an expert commentator during the 2018 men’s World Cup she was critical of the use of VAR.
“My first experience with VAR was as an NRK commentator during the 2018 World Cup, and I thought it was terrible. Because I didn’t understand what was happening. It almost ruined the match. I was very much against it”, she said in an interview.
As awareness of the corruption that led to the gulf state being awarded the hosting rights of the 2022 World Cup and of Qatar’s abuse of migrant workers grew, so grew the boycott Qatar movement.
Top flight club Tromsø, famous in the anglosphere for beating Chelsea in a snowy Cup Winners Cup match in 1998, officially appealed for a boycott and was quickly supported by other top-flight clubs like Brann, Rosenborg and Vålerenga.
At the 2021 NFF congress, held digitally due to Covid, a motion called for the national team to boycott the 2022 World Cup, should the team qualify. It was decided to move this to an extraordinary congress to be held on 20 June.
A real football democracy
Norwegian sport is a democracy, at all levels. Clubs are – by law – owned by its members. No company or person can own a Norwegian sports club, whether it’s a multi-sports club, football club, skiing club – or whether it limits its activity to six to twelve year-olds in a fishing village or is a big city club with an annual turnover of 20 million euro.
All members 15 years of age or older can show up at the club’s AGM and vote on club matters – how money is spent, its policies and laws, and who will sit on the club’s board. Some AGMs are one man and his dog affairs, others fill small venues. And all of these clubs, roughly 1750, can sign up to be delegates at the NFF congress, held annually at Ullevaal Stadion.
In the run up for the extraordinary congress in June 2021, the NFF leadership, lead by then-president Terje Svendsen, would show its true colours using fear-mongering and outright lies to try to quell the boycott movement.
The NFF had never voiced concern or criticism over the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar, despite Terje Svendsen several times stating otherwise. His predecessor Yngve Hallén had even said he was “positive” to a World Cup in Qatar.
A boycott would have dramatic financial repercussions, with lawsuits from TV rights holders, sponsors pulling out and loss of matchday income, according to the NFF. They claimed Fifa might exclude Norway from all international football activity. Though no precedent existed and no further evidence was given.
The financial loss – first claimed to reach 100 million kroner, quickly upgraded to over 200 million – would hit the grassroots as well as elite clubs hard, NFF said.
They claimed sponsors would flee. Josimar contacted all the federation’s major sponsors. No one would pull out. Rather, they were in full support of whatever conclusion, boycott or not, the extraordinary NFF congress would reach.
“We support and respect the democratic process,” Norsk Tipping, the state-owned betting company, said and vowed continued financial support.
The “independent” committee
Norsk Supporterallianse (NSA), the umbrella organisation of supporters’ clubs, drummed up support for a boycott and listed supporters’ groups, political parties, trade unions and other organisations in favour of a boycott on their website. The list of pro-boycott football clubs had to be removed, however, as the clubs on the list received intimidating phone calls by NFF representatives.
As the pro-boycott movement gained traction among the country’s biggest clubs, regular match-goers and society at large, the federation was under pressure. It now had a star-studded national team with a real chance of qualifying for a World Cup. It could be the men’s team’s first appearance in an international tournament since Euro 2000. And the threat of boycott was real.
In a move to change the public discourse, it set up an “independent Qatar committee” chaired by former Norwegian Red Cross president, and former head of marketing at the NFF, Sven Mollekleiv. The committee would produce a report, on which the NFF would base its final decision.
The “independent” committee leaned on statements from Fifa, ILO, ITUC and the Qataris themselves – who all emphasised ‘reforms’ taking place in the Gulf state.
ILO’s presence in Qatar was and still is fully funded by the Qataris. ITUC secretary general Luca Visentini was later removed from his position after taking money from the main suspect in the Qatargate scandal. Nobody was under any illusion the final report would recommend a boycott.
The report the “independent” Qatar committee delivered a few months later, would change Lise Klaveness’ viewpoint.
“Stinking vantage point”
In 2015 she wrote a hard-hitting opinion piece in Bergens Tidende titled “The World Cup of life and death”.
“Hardly anyone is any longer in doubt, Qatar won the 2022 hosting rights as a result of corruption. From this stinking vantage point, it has gone further downhill.
“It’s estimated, for every 2022 World Cup match, 62 lives will have been lost.
“Even in life’s nuanced reality there are edges. For example, holding a party which has cost thousands of human lives. It’s not political to say no. It’s the only thing to do.”
Three years later, she maintained her position on Qatar.
“I will boycott, and urge other pundits to do the same”, she tweeted in 2018.
She didn’t change her view after becoming an NFF employee.
“My personal opinion hasn’t changed. I feel strongly against Qatar and the way they won the hosting rights”, she told Aftenposten in 2021.
Just a few months later, she did a 180 degree turn. She cited the NFF initiated Qatar report as the reason for her change of mind and heart.
“I look at it differently now, with other spectacles”, she told TV 2.
Though the pro-boycott side had shown up in force, it came as no surprise that the NFF board’s recommendation not to boycott won the vote at the extraordinary congress. And then the motion put forward by Martin Paulsen from SK Trane that instructed the NFF president to voice criticism of Fifa and Qatar at the next Fifa congress passed.
This meant Terje Svendsen would have to enter the podium at the 2022 congress in Doha, criticise Fifa and Qatar and raise concerns over corruption and human rights issues. Anyone familiar with Svendsen knew this would never happen. As expected, in November he made it public that he would not seek reelection. His resignation paved the way for Lise Klaveness.
“There are some dark clouds in the international sky, that you can’t blow or shout away. We have to enter the arena and work for our values – equality, transparency and democracy”, Klaveness said after accepting to be the election committee’s candidate for the NFF presidency.
Examination or introduction
To get to VAR, we have to look back (in anger).
During the NFF congress in 2020, part of the two-day session would include NFF’s ‘strategy plan’ – a 21 item document outlining the goals and strategies for all football activity in the coming years. It’s the type of debate that can drag on. It fills some delegates with enthusiasm, whilst others look like they’re about to die of boredom.
One of the 21 items up for discussion was “Referees’ development. A sub-sentence said that NFF would “examine the possibilities of introducing VAR” in Norwegian football.
This congress took place in March, with the Covid-19 pandemic quickly moving in our direction and totally dominating the news cycle. The big issue, football-wise, was whether the men’s national team game versus Serbia a few weeks later would go ahead as planned. Four days after the congress, Norway went into lockdown.
VAR was not on anyone’s minds. Anyone but Fotball Media AS’ minds, that is. Fotball Media AS is the company in charge of selling Norwegian football’s media rights. The company is 50 percent owned by the NFF and 50 percent owned by the elite clubs’ association (NTF).
In October 2020 the tender for the next media rights period went out to potential buyers.
“In 2020 the NFF Congress approved the introduction of video assistant referee (VAR)”, it said.
Form the 2020 media rights tender.
Seven months after congress had decided to examine ‘the possibilities of introducing VAR’, and a full year before introduction of VAR was on the agenda at an NFF board meeting, this document claiming congress actually had approved the introduction was floated to media companies.
In 2021 Norway went in and out of lockdown, and without VAR ever having been part of a debate within the clubs or the federation, 15 out of 16 of the boards of the top flight clubs – without any involvement by the clubs’ members – decided they were in favour of introducing VAR. A decision many clubs now regret.
On 1 November 2021, the NFF board decided to introduce VAR in the men’s top flight, starting in 2023. No minutes from this board meeting exist and no board members Josimar has spoken to remember anything about it.
The well-hidden sentence in the 2020 strategy document, about “examining the possibilities of introducing VAR”, had grown into “congress approved the introduction of VAR” to VAR being fully implemented from the 2023 season.
The hunt for centimetres
“The learning curve will be steep”, Terje Hauge, NFF’s head of referees, said as the 2023 season was about to kick off, and asked for patience. They would need 10 league rounds to make VAR work properly, he said.
Two full football seasons later and hardly anyone says it has worked properly, not even those in the pro-VAR camp, who emphasise VAR should be “developed” and not scrapped.
Protests among match-going fans started immediately, and the 2023 season saw anti-VAR banners at most grounds, whole singing sections protesting by staying silent, arranging sit-downs and walk-outs. The most ardent supporters entered the ground, watched the game kick off – and left.
None of the protests and none of the surreal VAR moments seemed to make any impact on football’s leadership echelon. In one game, the VAR room needed seven minutes to conclude the pitch referee had made the right decision. There were instances of career-threatening tackles not being reviewed by VAR. There were a lot of marginal offside calls.
“The player was four centimetres offside”, became a standard reply by VAR chief Svein Oddvar Moen. VAR was supposed to be about correcting “clear and obvious errors”. It had turned out to be “a hunt for centimetres”, as one club director told Josimar.
“We have the luxury version of VAR”, NFF’s head of referees Terje Hauge said. The VAR chief, Svein Oddvar Moen, claimed VAR in Norway “is not a cheapskate version, but the same as Uefa uses”.
As the 2024 season kicked off, VAR was the hottest potato in football circles. Even NRK Debatten, the state broadcaster’s most viewed debate programme, discussed the matter with NFF general secretary Karl-Petter Løken taking part.
Løken said “this examination [decided by the 2020 congress] formed the basis on which the NFF board approved the introduction of VAR in November 2021”.
In an email to Josimar the day after the TV debate, Løken repeated what he’d said and added that such documents are never shared.
Eight months later, however, he did a u-turn and admitted that no such examination had ever taken place.
“No examination exists”, Løken wrote in an email to Josimar in November 2024.
It’s raining fish cakes
In July 2024, Lillestrøm supporters set off on the eight-hour, 500-kilometre one-way trip to Trondheim for their team’s match against Rosenborg. Supporters’ previous protests had fallen on deaf ears.
The supporters upped the ante. Both sets of supporters decided to make themselves noticed and turned to civil disobedience. It rained fish cakes and tennis balls from the terraces. Three times play was stopped and after the third the referee decided the game would be abandoned. After basically having seen no football, Lillestrøm fans returned to the coaches for the eight-hour, 500-kilometre return trip.
Fish cakes on the pitch at Rosenborg v. Lillestrøm in July 2024.
The action got the Norwegian football leadership’s attention. They urged supporters to stop their protests and rather channel their protests through a proper democratic process via their clubs and the federation.
In August, the NFF decided to create a ‘VAR committee’ where all the football’s stakeholders would be represented. It was a blueprint of the Qatar process – set up a ‘broad independent panel’ that would eventually lead to the answers the NFF wanted to hear. Former Oslo city council leader, Raymond Johansen, would chair the group.
At the press conference where the group was launched, Lise Klaveness made two statements the football community took note of. The NFF would let the democratic processes run in the clubs, without the federation’s interference, she said. And, whatever the member clubs of the NTF would decide would weigh heavily in the NFF board’s recommendation to the 2025 congress on whether VAR should be scrapped or not.
The numbers game
On 20 November Raymond Johansen presented the 123-page report. According to the report, those most opposed to VAR were match-going supporters and those most in favour of VAR were referees.
The yearly cost for VAR in the Norwegian top flight is 17 million kroner. The report outlines the cost if VAR should be developed and improved. An increase from five to eight cameras would cost 25 million kroner per year, semi-automated offside 5 million and sensor in the ball 10 million. The cost of goal line technology would be 36 million kroner.
In the public debates that followed, Klaveness would refer to the report’s findings many times – though, never to the real cost estimates.
An improvement would cost 5 million kroner, she said at the press conference on 29 January. Three days before the 2025 congress, this was reduced to 500 000 kroner, mirroring what NFF said during the Qatar debate when they first said that the financial losses of boycotting was 100 million kroner, and then a few days later, claiming they would lose 200 million.
In the months after the report was published, leading up to the NTF member clubs’ meeting on 22 January, many clubs held extraordinary AGMs to decide where they stood in the VAR question – with record turnouts among many clubs. Despite Klaveness reassuring the public that the NFF would stay away from the clubs’ democratic processes, general secretary Karl-Petter Løken showed up at the EAGM of Fredrikstad FK and spoke in favour of VAR, and showed a video of a goal situation in Fredrikstad’s cup semifinal that went against the club. VAR is not in use in cup matches. When criticised, Klaveness backed her right hand man.
“The criticism is unfair. We have a hard-working and honest general secretary”, she said.
Input for Uefa
At the press conference, Lise Klaveness listed the views of Norwegian football’s stakeholders.
“That the NTF recommends VAR to be abolished is a strong signal to the NFF board, which weighs heavily in the board’s assessment. The bigger the majority, the stronger the signal. Yet this does not automatically mean the NFF’s board would reach the same decision as the NTF clubs”, Klaveness said, and spoke of the NFF board’s wider responsibility of taking the whole of Norwegian football into account.
Anyone in the room, or watching the live stream, now knew where she was headed.
Klaveness also read parts of a letter from Uefa general secretary Theodore Theodoris.
The letter was a response to NFF general secretary Karl-Petter Løken’s request for “input from Uefa”, sent on 21 January, the day before the elite clubs’ held their meeting and voted on VAR.
“[…] your perspective on the status and development of football in Europe is crucial to helping us make a well-grounded decision. Any written remarks or formal statements you can provide will be instrumental in guiding our discussions,” Løken had written.
Theodoridis obliged, and Klaveness read his statement.
“It is our firm belief that football at the highest national level should be organised in the same way across all member associations’ competitions. Not being supported by VAR in their domestic competition will certainly make refereeing with VAR at international level more difficult and this could be to the detriment of a country’s national referees in Uefa competitions. Naturally, your congress is free to make its own decisions and remove VAR from Norwegian football. However, they should understand that they are turning the clock back. And be aware that the rest of the football world is moving in the opposite direction.”
Summarising the input of the stakeholders, she repeated the NTF’s majority to abolish VAR had “weighed heavily”, but added that NTF also had communicated that among the clubs’ boards there had been a significant majority of keeping VAR – echoing what NTF chairman Cato Haug had said a week before.
“We cannot abolish a project now that so many have invested in, and only having been in operation for two seasons, that has become an important part of European club and international football”, she said as part of her closing argument.
To many match-going supporters and club members the statement proved that abolishing VAR never had been an option. They had ended their protests, worked as advised through the proper democratic channels and won over a majority among the elite clubs. The VAR committee who had worked from August until late November to shed light on all aspects of VAR use, had been a pointless exercise.
The fog of VAR
After a quick summary of the 2024 annual report by general secretary Karl-Petter Løken, the first item up for voting at the 2025 NFF congress, after the delegates had lunch, was VAR.
In the run-up to this year’s congress all 18 heads of the regional FAs had co-signed an op-ed in favour of keeping VAR – before the regional FAs had held their annual general meetings. The regional FAs, on cue-like, usually take turns in taking the podium to lend support to the NFF board on whatever matter. Even more so in this issue.
Elite clubs in favour of scrapping VAR had filed a counter motion. Active supporters had appealed to grassroots clubs to vote in solidarity with their local elite clubs – many fans who spend their weekends on the terraces, spend their weekday evenings volunteering in various roles at their local community club. Some grassroots clubs had publicly declared they refused to be a pawn in a game they weren’t involved in, and would indeed vote to scrap VAR.
Yet, many of the grassroots clubs who took the podium in the three hour long session would repeat the arguments made by the NFF board and regional FA representatives – the most used being “to help referees”.
Pro-VAR was supposed to be a vote in favour of “further developing VAR”, yet the three hours of discussion was void of any hows, whats and cost assessments of this development. The actual cost of of tens of millions per year for technology that works, was never part of the discussion.
In practice, a pro-VAR vote was a vote to keep the status quo, a version of VAR hardly even the staunchest VAR defenders would say works.
Aslak Sira Myhre, a former leader of the socialist Red Party and a delegate representing the Oslo club Korsvoll IL, took the podium and made a rallying cry addressing president Lise Klaveness.
“You are not a big-wig, you are not corrupt […] you are my leader and thank you for that!,” he said and drew raucous applause.
The NFF board won the vote 321-129. Small clubs had voted heavily in favour of something they will never enjoy or benefit from, only help foot the bill.
The sound of silence
The Eliteserien season started this past weekend. All over the country, banners reading “defend democracy” hung at each end of the grounds. Singing sections kept quiet for the first 15 minutes before bursting into song and waving of flags, to show the contrast between games with and without the atmosphere they create. Vålerenga fans took it a step further. At their game against Viking, the home end was totally empty for the first quarter of an hour. It was like watching a game during the pandemic, before it all came alive. Lise Klaveness watched it unfold from the stadium’s VIP section.
Vålerenga is back in the top flight, having spent last season in the second tier. In their season opener, on Sunday 31 March 2025, they played Viking at home.
Left: The first15 minutes. Right: From 15 minutes on.
Lise Klaveness’ standing among the small clubs scattered around the country is solid as the Norwegian winter is long and harsh, as the applause and cheers she received from the delegates at this year’s congress shows. For those who make the top division a true spectacle, the supporters, on the other hand, the trust and confidence in her and her federation is sub-zero.
As football politicians gather at the Uefa congress in Belgrade this week, she will become a member of Uefa’s executive committee. After years as an outsider in international football politics, she is now among friends and part of the establishment.
