Ranheim

Ranheim Fotball go into the Norwegian second tier still built, on paper, as Rosenborg's neighbours and feeder club — an arrangement in place since 2006 that once looked like a footnote and then, in 2017, produced results. That year the club finished fourth in 1. divisjon, went through the play-offs, beat Sogndal on penalties and reached the top flight for the first time since 1956. A year later Ranheim finished seventh in Eliteserien, its best league placing in decades, and manager Svein Maalen was named Norway's Coach of the Year for the campaign. A Norwegian Cup semi-final followed in 2019.

None of that was the plan when the club started out in Trondheim in 1901, at a time when it ran skiing and athletics sections and had no football team at all. Football only arrived in 1919, and it took until the early 1920s to become anything more than an afterthought inside the wider sports club. The elite side now trades under the Ranheim Fotball name to separate it from the amateur sections still playing under the same roof.

Promotions have come in stages rather than all at once: out of 2. divisjon in 1996 with 51 points and 75 goals scored, out of 3. divisjon in 2004 after seeing off Stjørdals-Blink in the play-off, and out of 2. divisjon again in 2009, this time with direct promotion from top spot. Sogndal remain a recurring name in that story, the club Ranheim kept meeting in the matches that decided whether a season ended in promotion or not.

On derby day the opponent is Rosenborg, and the Trondheimsderby carries an edge that the farm-club arrangement does not soften — if anything it sharpens it, particularly in the seasons when both clubs have shared a division. Strindheim, from the same city, provide the more local rivalry. Ranheim still play at EXTRA Arena, a 3,000-capacity ground that keeps the club's ceiling modest even in the years when the results have not been.