On 19 May 1917 twelve boys from the Rosenborg district of Trondheim founded a small football team. Today Rosenborg is the most successful club in Norway, and on 19 May 2027 it turns 110 years old.

A membership fee the price of a cinema ticket

The boys were about 17, and the fee was 25 øre a week, as much as a cinema ticket cost at the time. They named their team Odd, in honour of Odd from Skien, the best team in Norway in those days.

Their first match was in July 1918 against Falk, and they won 2-1. Shortly before, on 19 May 1918, treasurer Karl Skagen had brought complete kits for all twelve.

Why it became Rosenborg

For years the little Odd was not admitted to the local league. The Norwegian FA did not allow two clubs with the same name, so the team took the name of its neighbourhood and became Rosenborg Ballklub.

Sources disagree on the year of the change. English Wikipedia places it on 26 October 1928, while the club itself and other sources speak of 1927.

From blue to black and white

The first kits of 1918 were blue shirts with yellow detailing and white shorts. In 1931 the team adopted a white shirt and black shorts, the colours of Odd from Skien, as a tribute to its first name.

That combination has remained the home kit to this day, while the away kit is black. A shirt sponsor appeared for the first time in 1971. The team's nickname is Troillongan, "the Troll Children".

Lerkendal and the Eggen era

Rosenborg spent years in the lower divisions. It won its first Cup in 1960, and in 1967, its first season in the top flight, it immediately won the league as well. Since the late 1950s its home has been Lerkendal Stadion, a few kilometres south of Trondheim's centre.

The man who changed everything was Nils Arne Eggen. As coach, in five separate spells, he won the 1971 Double and led the team to a run of 13 consecutive league titles from 1992 to 2004.

As early as 1985 the team had won the league in front of a record crowd of 28,569, ending 14 years without a title. Eggen retired in 2002, after a Champions League match against Lyon, with about 20,000 fans giving him a standing ovation.

Nights in Europe

In 1995 Rosenborg reached the Champions League group stage for the first time. In the 1996/97 season it went to San Siro needing a win against Milan, won 2-1 and advanced to the quarter-finals, where it was knocked out by Juventus.

The following season it also beat Real Madrid 2-0, and in the early 2000s it set a record of eight consecutive group-stage appearances. In those years Harald Martin Brattbakk shone as the all-time top scorer with more than 250 goals, as did Roar Strand, with a record 644 appearances and his number 6 shirt retired. Vegard Heggem and John Carew also came through the team.

Celebrate with us

From the twelve boys with their cinema-ticket fee to the win at San Siro, Rosenborg counts 110 years of history. With a record 26 league titles, the black and white of Trondheim remains the benchmark in Norway.

Happy birthday, Rosenborg! May Lerkendal stay full for many more years.

See our collectible jerseys at sportarena.gr.

Photo: Lerkendal Stadion during Rosenborg v Celtic, 2018 – Ssu, Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.