Steffen Iversen for Norway
While Steffen Iversen may not have had the glittering career he looked destined for as a young player at Rosenborg, as a Norwegian international, he has had some high points. As Euro 2020 approaches, Iversen holds a very particular record in this competition for his country. Iversen is the son of Norwegian striker Odd Iversen, who scored 19 goals in 45 games for his country, from 1967–79. The son would outscore the father, with 21 goals for his country, although across 79 matches, and would have a full international career lasting from 1998–2011. His club career was spent at three spells at Rosenborg, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Valerenga, Herd, Trygg/Lade, Haugar Crystal Palace, and most famously at Tottenham, where he would score 64 goals. He would win 6 TIppelagen, the Norwegian league title, one Norwegian Football Cup in 1995 and the English League Cup in 1999.
Iversen was a regular for the Norweigian Under-21s, scoring a record number of goals for them. First picked for them in 1995, the same year he made his full debut at Rosenborg, he would go onto score 17 goals in 23 games at youth level. What saw him force his way in to the national side, however, was the 1998 UEFA European Under-21 Championships in Romania. With Norway entering the 8-team competition for the first time at this level, they finished third. Iversen starred, scoring the winner against Sweden in the quarter-final, against a team with Freddie Ljungburg, Erik Edman and Olof Mellberg, before Norway would lose to winners Spain in added time in the semi-final. In the third place play-off, normally an irrelevance but not in an 8-team tournament, Iversen scored both goals against a Holland team with van Nistelrooy and van Bommel. Finishing joint-top scorer with Nikos Liberopoulos, he was given his full debut later that year against Albania, aged 21.
As a full international, he scored his first goal in a 6–0 demolition of Jamaica on the 20th May, 1999. He would be instrumental in securing Norway’s qualification for the Euro 2000 finals, scoring the winner in every match he played, including a winner against Georgia. In their debut European Championship, they were drawn in a group with Spain, the FR Yugoslavia and Slovenia. The opening match was Spain. Although not the all-conquering 2008–2012 side of tiki-taka, Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets, Spain in 2000 were still fearsome opponents. Known for a highly direct, physical style of play, la Furia Roja, they would go on to finish in the quarterfinals, knocked out by France. On a sunny afternoon in Rotterdam, the 6th October, 2000, Steffen Iversen would score the only goal as Norway won their first ever European Championship match. A simple enough goal, “the then-Tottenham Hotspur FC man nodding into an empty net from 12 metres after he latched onto Thomas Myhre’s long clearance,” it was enough to win. It remains the only goal Norway have scored in a European Championship.
After Norway’s group stage exit, Iversen would go on to regularly lead the line for his country until 2008, scoring 21 goals in his 79 appearances. In August 2008, however, he overslept for a squad meeting before a friendly match against the Republic of Ireland, and national team coach Age Hareide sent him home. He was then 32, and on the fringes of the squad, the last goals he would score for Norway were a brace on the 6th of September, 2008 in a 2–2 draw against Iceland in Oslo, in a World Cup 2010 qualifier. The last of his 79 caps came at the age of 35. Much like his club career, Iversen’s international record is one of unfulfilled potential. A superb youth record could not be matched by his later showing. Nevertheless, he still holds the proud distinction of being the only Norwegian player to ever score in a European Championship, and against world class opponents. In that much, at least, he left his mark on Norway’s footballing history.
