'It was like we had this magic kid!'

Take United Women's most recent UEFA Women’s Champions League visitors, for example – in their previous fixture before heading to Leigh, Valerenga were away to Bodo/Glimt: just the 500 miles by air from Oslo, or well over 700 by road. Rosenborg, based in Trondheim, is another far-flung away day that puts fresh perspective on our WSL trips to Crawley and Kingsmeadow.

For the most part, though, the teams competing towards the top of the women’s league pyramid in Norway are more closely concentrated towards the south of this long and narrow nation. After all, that’s where its three most-populated cities can all be found: Oslo, Bergen and Stavanger/Sandnes. No doubt last Wednesday saw many fans tune in from Oslo to watch the Reds’ 1-0 win, with Valerenga being the capital’s biggest club.

But out in Norway’s rugged south-western corner, those from the county of Rogaland, where Stavanger/Sandnes is located, were also watching with keen interest – after all, they have a local girl who now wears no.10 for Manchester United.

While every Red has had their role to play so far in our push to the UWCL league phase, Elisabeth Terland undoubtedly stands apart, with her hat-trick against former club Brann in our crunch qualifier to take us into the league phase making it seven goals in her first four European games for United.

In Rogaland, where Terland grew up (specifically the village of Naerbo, near Bryne) there is a strong sense of pride over what she’s achieved in her career to date. And considering Elisabeth only turned 24 this summer, that’s matched by the excitement for what lies ahead for United’s fiercely determined and increasingly clinical striker.

One such person who knows this region of Norway very well is Olli Harder. It was 2016 when the New Zealander – then head coach of Klepp, before subsequent stints in charge of West Ham and Brann – first met the player we now affectionately know as ‘Teri’.

“Klepp is near Bryne, where Elisabeth is from, and she was about 14-and-a-half when she came to train with us for a bit,” Harder tells us as he recalls that first meeting. “We knew a bit about her through the regional teams – we knew she’d been playing in the boys’ team at Bryne, but it had got to the point where she was now up against 16-year-olds, and there was an obvious physical difference at that point so it was time for her to move into the women’s game.”

For all of Terland’s immense potential, assuring first-team football to a kid who wasn’t yet through high school wasn’t something Harder was in a position to do. After all, Klepp were an established top-flight side – one that finished 6th, 10th and 4th in the Toppserien between 2015 and 2017.

“I remember she came into my office – she must have been 15 by that point – and I said to her, ‘we’d love to have you on board but there are no guarantees – I can’t promise that you’ll play’,” says Harder. “It’s one of those things you kind of have to say as a coach, but I’ll never forget the look she gave me, which was kind of like, ‘yeah, right!’”

As WSL followers have come to recognise, such self-belief is one of Teri’s chief strengths, and after she agreed to sign for Klepp, she was swiftly knocking on the first-team door. “Within, I’d say, three months, I sat with my assistant and said, ‘we can’t not play this girl’. She was still a baby, 15, but we had the philosophy that ‘if you’re good enough you’re old enough’ and by then we’d realised she was clearly good enough.”

And so, on 17 April 2017, two months shy of her 16th birthday, Terland made her debut in the Toppserien. A tricky away game against reigning champions LSK Kvinner ended in defeat, but Terland didn’t look out of place alongside her more senior peers, including fellow future Red Maria Thorisdottir.

“We never played her up front – it was always attacking midfield, and she’d later play on the wing for a bit for the national team’s younger age groups,” says Harder as he recalls that 2017 breakthrough season, in which Terland would play 19 times, scoring three as Klepp came fourth under Harder’s stewardship – their highest finish since 1999. “She was creating, and scoring, as she was so good at getting the ball on the half-turn, and finding space in pockets. Then there was obviously the quality of her passing.”

Alongside her first-team exploits, Terland was also very much the shining light of Klepp’s U19s, with one of many star turns coming against last week's opponents Valerenga. “It was like a junior FA Cup, but in Norway, and we played Valerenga in the final,” explains Harder. “We still hold the record for that final, as we won 9-1. I can’t even remember how many Elisabeth scored, but she was banging them in; it was at least a hat-trick. It was like we had this magic kid in the team – just give her the ball and something will happen!”

And things really started to happen the following term, as Klepp’s seniors finished 2nd. Harder would be nominated for Norwegian Coach of the Year, while the 2018 Toppserien saw Teri ramp up her attacking threat from midfield, with seven goals in 25 games.

DOING IT FOR HERSELF

Terland may have already been living the dream as an established top-flight footballer while still in her mid-teens, but Harder and the other coaches at Klepp – and by now those involved in selecting her for Norway’s youth teams – could also recognise an elite, headstrong mentality for someone so young, as well as a player who was doing it all for herself.

Key to that, Harder insists, were her parents, Espen and Anette. Her dad was heavily involved in regional football, and if we rewind a little to Elisabeth’s first few years in the game, Espen would always encourage his daughter to move up to a higher level as soon as she became the best player on a team. And when she was 13 – a time when Elisabeth was also competing at a decent level in handball – he urged her to move into boys’ football at Bryne. (There, the age group above also had a highly promising talent who’d eventually end up in Manchester, but the one-year gap meant they’d never share a pitch. His name? Erling Haaland.)

Elisabeth herself would later reflect on the benefits of that switch away from girls’ football, saying: “The boys were good, and I always had something to measure myself against. I think that’s had a great impact on me and my development.”

As for dad Espen, prior to his daughter joining Klepp he would speak to Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten about her development. “People thought she did nothing but train, and that I was a crazy father who stood on the sidelines and screamed,” he said. “But it was always mandatory to have at least one day off a week. She was also never allowed to train twice, ie both football and handball on the same day. And then she had to choose [between the sports].”

Elisabeth opted for football, while her younger sister pursued handball, and Harder has nothing but praise for how parents Espen and Anette supported their girls: “One of the things Espen helped with – which I don’t think we do enough now – is to get her that opportunity to play and train with boys up to 15 years old, which can obviously give you a massive advantage developmentally.

“So her parents were very active in supporting her dream – but they also knew when enough was enough. Sometimes you get parents that go too far, almost as if they are living through their kids, whereas Elisabeth’s parents were clear on what they wanted from her, but also clear that this was her thing – at the end of the day if she was going to do it, it would be on her to do it. As a coach, I really appreciated that relationship with them.”

And even once she was part of the first-team picture at Klepp, Elisabeth’s parents reminded her of the importance in continuing her education. “I’ll always remember her coming to the stadium after school, and she’d sit with her homework – sometimes I’d try to help! – and she’d bring a packed lunch,” says Harder. “She’d see the older girls turn up for training, and she kind of needed to find her place within that group. So it was really fun to see as she became more and more important to the group, until by 18 or 19, when she became the lead singer of the band.”

BIG-SISTER-LITTLE-SISTER

One team-mate who really helped the teen tyro develop within that environment was Tameka Yallop (née Butt) – the experienced Australian midfielder, 10 years Teri’s senior, who’d later go on to join Harder at West Ham. “One of the big things for us was to set Elisabeth up with a mentor, so we had them as a big-sister-little-sister kind of thing,” says Harder. “She got to learn her trade from Tameka, a top-quality professional, and it really helped her.”

Terland’s third term at Klepp – one in which her team again impressed under Harder, finishing third – would be more of a challenge for her, as the demands of playing for Klepp’s first team and U19s, as well as Norway U19s, led to a not-serious yet frustrating repetitive strain injury on account of playing too many games. Still, seven goals from 10 senior appearances for Klepp was further evidence of her increasingly dead-eye precision in front of goal, and still from midfield. Despite missing a number of games through injury, Aftenposten crowned her the top female talent in Norwegian football in 2019.

BRANN, THEN BRIGHTON

That 2019 campaign would be Harder’s last at Klepp, with the Auckland-born boss then taking on an assistant manager’s job in the men’s game, alongside a similar role with Norway Women’s U23s. It would have been no surprise to the departing head coach, or anyone else who’d witnessed Terland’s development at Klepp, that she was soon destined for an imminent move to a bigger stage.

The following November saw Teri, now aged 19, move to Sandviken (the team that would become Brann) and in 2021 she won the Toppserien – which for all of her personal success remains Terland’s only major trophy to date.

As for Harder, he’d beat Terland into the WSL, managing West Ham from December 2020 until May 2022 (bringing the Hammers to Old Trafford for our first-ever game there in March 2021, and taking them to a team-best sixth place finish in his final season), moving on just weeks before Terland joined Brighton.

Now back coaching in the men’s game, at U19 level for Norwegian side Viking, Harder continues to enjoy watching Elisabeth’s season-on-season progress. “She’s taken smart steps,” asserts the 39-year-old. “To go from Klepp to Brann was good for her, and then from Brann to Brighton, and then Brighton to Man United... all really smart steps.

“Sometimes you see young players take steps that are too big. Even in her first year at Brighton she didn’t set the world alight in terms of stats [eight goals in 22 games as Terland made the transition to a forward], so it took a little while to get the burners going, but now she’s in fantastic form.

“It’s really great to see. Personality-wise you can’t help but enjoy being in Elisabeth’s company. She’s always got a smile on her face. And it’s also not surprising to see how she’s progressed. As a coach, you never really know if a young talent is going to make it to the top... but sometimes you do kind of know! Because the thing that struck me the most with Elisabeth wasn’t that she had the quality – it was obvious she did – but that she had the mentality.

“That’s something you always look out for as a coach – how players can cope with that whole journey. It’s such a rocky path that you need to have your head screwed on if you want to get to where she is now. I’ve seen a lot of other good young players not quite make it, or choose other paths in life, because they struggle to handle adversity. But Elisabeth looks like she can handle whatever she’s faced with.”