Ørjan Berg (born 20 August 1968) is a Norwegian former professional
footballer
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...
who played as a
midfielder
A midfielder is an outfield position in association football.
Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...
. He is the current sporting director of Bodø/Glimt.
Berg retired at the end of the 2006 season, having played for Bodø/Glimt,
Wettingen
Wettingen is a residential community in the district of Baden in the Swiss canton of Aargau. With a population about 20,000, Wettingen is the second-largest municipality in the canton.
Geography
Wettingen is located on the right bank of the Li ...
,
TSV 1860 Munich
, commonly known as TSV 1860 München (; lettered as ) or 1860 Munich, is a sports club based in Munich. The club's football team currently plays in the 3. Liga, the third tier of German football.
1860 Munich was one of the founding members o ...
and Rosenborg. He is the brother of Bodø/Glimt player
Runar Berg
Runar Berg (born 7 October 1970) is a Norwegian former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. He played for Bodø/Glimt, Rosenborg, Tromsø, Lyn, and Venezia. Berg is brother of former Bodø/Glimt and Rosenborg player Ørjan Be ...
and the son of midfielder and playmaker
Harald Berg
Harald Johan «Dutte» Berg (born 9 November 1941 in Bodø) is a former Norwegian playmaker and midfielder, nickname "Dutte". He is the brother of Knut Berg, the father of Ørjan Berg, Runar Berg and Arild Berg, and grandfather of Patrick Berg ...
.
Club career
Berg first played – as his father had – at Bodø/Glimt, then playing in the 2nd division, later moving up to the 1st. In 1988 Rosenborg coach
Nils Arne Eggen
Nils Arne Eggen (17 September 1941 – 19 January 2022) was a Norwegian footballer, manager and teacher from Orkdal. Eggen was closely tied to Rosenborg, the club he managed for 23 years between 1970 and 2010. He is Norway's most successful clu ...
brought him and his friend Jahn Ivar "Mini" Jakobsen from Bodø/Glimt to Rosenborg, where they won the double in their debut year in the Norwegian top division.
After two seasons at Rosenborg, Berg was sold to Swiss club
FC Wettingen
FC Wettingen was a Swiss football club from Wettingen, Switzerland. It was founded in 1931, but due to financial problems they went bankrupt in 1993. In the same year it was refounded as ''FC Wettingen 93''. In the 2012/13 season, the name was c ...
during the winter break of the
1990–91 Nationalliga A
Statistics of Swiss National League A in the 1990–91 football season.
Overview
It was contested by 12 teams, and Grasshopper Club Zürich won the championship.
First stage Table
Results
Second stage
Championship group Table
Results ...
. Berg played the first half of the 1991–92 Nationalliga A season with Wettingen, but could not save the team from slumping to the bottom of the league table. He spent the second half of the season playing in Germany for
1860 Munich
, commonly known as TSV 1860 München (; lettered as ) or 1860 Munich, is a sports club based in Munich. The club's football team currently plays in the 3. Liga, the third tier of German football.
1860 Munich was one of the founding members of ...
.
Berg joined Basel's first team for their 1992–93 season under head-coach Friedel Rausch. Basel at that time were playing in the Nationalliga B and their priority aim was the promotion. After playing in three test games, Berg played his domestic league debut for his new club in the first game of the season, an away game, on 18 July 1992 as Basel were defeated 0–1 by
Grenchen
Grenchen (french: Granges) is a municipality in the district of Lebern in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland.
It is located at the foot of the Jura mountains between Solothurn and Biel/Bienne, approximately north of Bern. With over 16,000 i ...
. Berg scored his first goal for the club in the home game in the St. Jakob Stadium on 18 August. It was the third goal of the match as Basel won 7–0 against Bümpliz. Berg was a regular starter, he played 35 of the 36 league matches scoring nine goals, but Basel missed their promotion aim finishing fourth in the league table.
During Basel's 1993–94 season, under new head-coach Claude Andrey, his team mates were the likes of Swiss international goalkeeper
Stefan Huber
Stefan Huber (born 14 June 1966) is a Swiss former footballer who played as a goalkeeper during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s.
Club career
Huber played his youth football by local club FC Unterstrass. He then moved to Grasshopper Club and b ...
Marco Walker
Marco Walker (born 2 May 1970) is a Swiss football manager and a former international who played as a defender during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
Club career
Walker started his youth football with local club FC Bellach. From 1983 with he was ...
and
Samir Tabakovic
Samir (variantly spelled Sameer) is a male name found commonly in the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe. In Arabic, Samir () means holy, jovial, loyal or charming. In Albanian, it translates literally as “so good” but the connotation is clo ...
Admir Smajić
Admir Smajić (born 7 September 1963) is a Bosnian professional football manager and former player.
He played for the Yugoslav national team and the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team.
Club career Partizan
Born in Bijeljina,Reto Baumgartner and the Swiss international strikers
Dario Zuffi
Dario Zuffi (born 7 December 1964) is a Swiss football coach and former international player. He is currently employed as assistant coach for FC Winterthur.
Career Playing career
Zuffi played his youth football with the local Winterthur team ...
and
Philippe Hertig
Philippe Hertig (born 2 July 1965) is a Swiss former footballer who played as a striker during the 1980s and 1990s. He is banker and is now assistant director of Mirabaud Group. In 2009 Hertig joined the Swiss Football Association as member of ...
. Together they won the Promotion/Relegation group and became Nationalliga B champions and thus won promotion to the top flight of Swiss football. This after six seasons in the second tier.
Despite being regular starter and winning the second division championship Berg decided to move on. During his two seasons with the club Berg played a total of 102 games for Basel scoring a total of 27 goals. 65 of these games were in the Nationalliga A, 11 in the Swiss Cup and 26 were friendly games. He scored 18 goals in the domestic league, four in the cup and the other five were scored during the test games.
Thus, he returned to his home club Bodø/Glimt in 1996. The team was now back in the top division, Berg played for three seasons losing a cup final against
Tromsø IL
Tromsø Idrettslag is a Norwegian professional football club founded in 1920, based in the city of Tromsø. They play their home games at Alfheim Stadion. Tromsø play in the Eliteserien.
Tromsø have won the Norwegian Cup twice, in 1986 and 19 ...
in 1996. In 1999 Rosenborg needed to strengthen its team to play in the
UEFA Champions League
The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competi ...
, and Berg went on loan to Rosenborg. Later that year he was traded to Rosenborg.
In mid-season 2006, he returned to his home town Bodø, trying to recover from injuries which has plagued him in the last (almost) two years. If he recovered, he said he would join Rosenborg again when preseason starts at the beginning of 2007 – which would have been his last season according to his contract. However, it became increasingly clear that his injury would never be completely healed, and he decided to terminate his contract a year early. His official farewell ceremony took place in the recess of the Rosenborg –
Viking
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden),
who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...
Egil Olsen
Egil Roger Olsen (born 22 April 1942), nicknamed Drillo, is a Norwegian football manager and former footballer. He is best known as a highly successful manager of the Norway national football team. He has since been manager of the Iraq national ...
became coach Berg was rarely found good enough for the squad. He got a second chance when Norway got Nils Johan Semb as coach in 1998 and Berg played on the national team again 10 years after his debut. He earned a total of 19 caps, scoring 1 goal. His last international match was a February 2000 friendly match against Sweden.
In 2002, Berg declared that he retired from the national team.
Personal life
He is married and has two sons, Bodø/Glimt player Patrick and Marius.
Honours
Rosenborg
*
Norwegian top division
Eliteserien () is a Norwegian professional league for association football clubs. At the top of the Norwegian football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. Contested by 16 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion ...
:
1988
File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Bicenten ...
,
1990
File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...
,
1999
File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...
,
2000
File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...
Norwegian Cup
The Norwegian Football Cup ( no, Norgesmesterskapet i fotball for herrer) is the main knockout cup competition in Norwegian football. It is run by the Football Association of Norway and has been contested since 1902, making it the oldest football ...
:
1988
File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Bicenten ...
,
1999
File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...
1994
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson ...
Kniksen award
The Kniksen Award ( no, Kniksenprisen), established in 1990, honors the best players in the Norwegian football premiership. The award is named after the legendary Norwegian football player Roald Jensen, nicknamed "Kniksen".
Categories
Catego ...
as Midfielder of the Year:
2000
File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...