Morten Knutsen (born 27 November 1977) is a Norwegian

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

coach and former player.

Career

Knutsen started his career in the

Arendal Arendal () is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Agder counties of Norway, county in southeastern Norway. Arendal belongs to the Districts of Norway, region of Southern Norway, Sørlandet. The administrative centre of the munici ...

-based club

IK Grane IK or Ik may refer to: Businesses and organizations * IK Investment Partners, a European private equity firm * Imair Airlines (IATA code IK) * Iparretarrak, a Basque nationalist organization Languages * Ik language (ISO 639 alpha-3 ikx), spoke ...

, and went on to the largest club in the region, IK Start. He made his debut in Tippeligaen in

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

.Morten Knutsen
Norwegian top division stats He then signed for Norway's best team at the time,

Rosenborg BK Rosenborg Ballklub, commonly referred to simply as Rosenborg () or RBK, is a Norwegian professional football club from Trondheim that plays in Eliteserien. The club has won a record 26 league titles, a shared record 12 Norwegian Football Cup ti ...

, ahead of the 2000 season. He played 24 games and scored seven goals in his first season, but then only played ten games in

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

. In

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

he was loaned to Start, where he played 19 games and scored four goals. After a poor

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

season with only two appearances for Rosenborg, he caught the interest of Odd Grenland in late 2003. He joined the team free of cost, playing 21 out of 26 league games in

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

, and scoring the winning goal in

extra time Overtime or extra time is an additional period of play specified under the rules of a sport to bring a game to a decision and avoid declaring the match a tie or draw where the scores are the same. In some sports, this extra period is played onl ...

when Odd Grenland beat FK Ekranas in the second qualifying round of the

UEFA Cup 2004–05 Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs fo ...

. In

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

, however, he only played five games. His time at Odd was marred by injury problems, and in 2006 he only played for the club's B team. He retired from football in February 2007, but already in March he signed for

FK Arendal FK Arendal is a defunct Norwegian football club from Arendal which existed from 2000 to 2008. At its peak it played in the third tier of the Norwegian league system. After its bankruptcy, a new, unrelated club called Arendal Fotball was started ...

on a pay-per-game contract. He stated that although he had given up playing in the Tippeligaen, the

2. divisjon The Norwegian Second Division, also called 2. divisjon and often referred to as PostNord-ligaen for sponsorship reasons, is the third-highest level of the Norwegian football league system. There are 28 teams divided into two groups, and at the ...

(third tier) might be a suitable arena. However, he almost immediately sustained a serious knee injury, losing the rest of the 2007 season. In the 2008 season he trained the junior team of IF Trauma, at the same time playing for the men's senior team. He also functioned as caretaker coach for the senior team while the head coach was off sick. In late 2008 he was announced as the new head coach of Trauma, effective from 2009. Knutsen is married, has children, and resides on Tromøya.

Honours

Rosenborg * Tippeligaen:

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 ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Knutsen, Morten Living people 1977 births Sportspeople from Arendal Norwegian footballers Men's association football wingers Eliteserien players IK Start players Rosenborg BK players Odds BK players FK Arendal players Arendal Fotball players Norwegian football managers