Gunnar Nils Thoresen (21 July 1920 – 30 September 2017) was one of the greatest Norwegian footballers in the 1940s and 1950s. A forward, played 64 matches and scored 22 goals for the Norway national team and took part in the

1952 Summer Olympics The 1952 Summer Olympics ( fi, Kesäolympialaiset 1952; sv, Olympiska sommarspelen 1952), officially known as the Games of the XV Olympiad ( fi, XV olympiadin kisat; sv, Den XV olympiadens spel) and commonly known as Helsinki 1952 ( sv, Helsin ...

. His last appearance for Norway came on 28 June 1959, less than a month before his 39th birthday, making him the oldest-ever Norwegian player to play for his national team. On club level Thoresen spent his entire career with

Larvik Turn Larvik Turn & Idrettsforening is a Norwegian sports club that does football, handball, athletics, wrestling, and gymnastics. The club was founded as early as 1865, and has been playing football since 1906. The football team was at its best ...

. He made his first-team debut for the club on 17 May 1937, in a match against Lisleby. He lost four seasons of his career (1941–1944) because of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, but quickly established himself among the best players in Norway when organized football resumed in 1945, and made his international debut against

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on 16 June 1946. As a member of Larvik Turn, Thoresen became league champion in 1952–53, 1954–55 and 1955–56. In addition he won the top scorer title twice. He scored 91 goals in 116 matches in the Norwegian top division, an average of 0.78 goals per match. He played his last match for Larvik Turn in 1962, having scored a total of 425 goals in 472 first-team matches for the club (including friendlies). This makes him the highest-scoring Norwegian footballer of all-time. Thoresen is the father of

Hallvar Thoresen Hallvar Thoresen (born 12 April 1957) is a former Norwegian footballer who played most of his career in the Dutch Eredivisie. The son of former Norwegian international Gunnar Thoresen, Hallvar Thoresen was central in 1980s Norwegian football. ...

, who also became a Norwegian international footballer, played professionally for

FC Twente Football Club Twente () is a Dutch professional football club from the city of Enschede, sometimes known internationally as Twente Enschede. The club was formed in 1965 by the merger of 1926 Dutch champions Sportclub Enschede with Enschedese ...

and

PSV Eindhoven Philips Sport Vereniging (; en, Philips Sports Association ), abbreviated as PSV and internationally known as PSV Eindhoven (), is a Dutch sports club from Eindhoven, Netherlands. It is best known for its professional football department, w ...

in the Netherlands, and is regarded as one of Norway's best players in the 1980s. Gunnar was capped 64 times, while Hallvar was played 50 internationals, making them Norway's second-most capped father-son combination, behind

Odd Odd means unpaired, occasional, strange or unusual, or a person who is viewed as eccentric. Odd may also refer to: Acronym * ODD (Text Encoding Initiative) ("One Document Does it all"), an abstracted literate-programming format for describing X ...

and Steffen Iversen who were capped a combined 124 times. Gunnar Thoresen died on 30 September 2017, at the age of 97.

Honours

Larvik Turn * Norwegian top division: 1952–53, 1954–55, 1955–56 Individual * Norwegian top division top scorer: 1952–53, 1953–54

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Thoresen, Gunnar 1920 births 2017 deaths Norwegian footballers Association football forwards Norway international footballers Larvik Turn players Eliteserien players People from Larvik Footballers at the 1952 Summer Olympics Olympic footballers of Norway Sportspeople from Vestfold og Telemark