Brann

The 2007 Norwegian championship was Brann's third, and the longest in coming. The wait stretched back 44 years, to the previous title in 1963. Mons Ivar Mjelde managed the side that finally closed it, having already won the Norwegian Cup with the club in 2004.

The club started in 1908 as Skiing and Football Club Brann, founded by Kristian K. Gran and Birger Gestland, before the skiing side split away in 1987 and left football as the whole of it. Brann Stadion has been home since 1919 and now holds 17,500.

A rougher nickname arrived through the 1980s: the elevator team, for a run from 1979 to 1986 when Brann dropped out of the top flight and rode straight back up almost every year. The label proved apt again decades later, with relegations in 2014 and 2021 both followed by an immediate return.

The Norwegian Cup has treated Brann more kindly than the league — 7 wins in all, the most recent in 2023. Defeat has come more often, in 10 lost finals, the first as early as 1917. Thorstein Helstad remains the top scorer of the club's modern era, with 104 goals in all competitions. He topped the Eliteserien's own scoring charts twice, in 2000 and 2001.

A win over PSV Eindhoven sent them into the Cup Winners' Cup quarter-final, where Liverpool beat them 3-0 at Anfield after a 1-1 draw in Bergen. Closer to home, one Cup final is remembered as much for the opponent as the result: 1972, when Brann beat Rosenborg 1-0.