Martin Odegaard, then 15 years old, was in the midst of his last year of education and was concerned about how he would balance his exams with his local football team’s practice in Norway, just a year ago.
Martin Odegaard, 16, has signed for Real Madrid, but just months ago he was fitting his secondary school studies around playing for his local team in Norway
Odegaard holds his shirt after being unveiled as a Real Madrid player, where he will be paid £40,000 a week
Odegaard’s proud family were at the signing at the Bernabeu stadium as he was announced as a Real Madrid player
Schoolboy to football star: Martin Odegaard, pictured with his brother, rose through the academy of his local team in Norway but now plays for the European champions
Odegaard became the youngest ever player to turn out for the Norwegian national side last year, just months after he made his first professional appearance in the Scandinavian nation’s premier league
The 16-year-old football prodigy has now joined Real Madrid, where he will play alongside players like Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Odegaard had an incredible year in 2014, going from being a schoolboy to becoming the youngest player to ever represent his country and this week agreeing to a £40,000-a-week contract with the European champions.
Growing up in a devout Christian family in the little riverbank community of Drammen, Odegaard frequently shared his religious views on Twitter as a teenager.
He was able to fit his studies around playing football because he was a member of the youth team of his local team, Strømsgodset, where his father had formerly played.
Odegaard began practicing with the adult team, who compete in the Norwegian Premier League, at the age of thirteen since he was always the odd one out among kids his own age.
Family man: The young footballer, pictured in Sweden with his mother, was brought up in a strong Christian family
Aged 15 years and 117 days, the attacking midfielder (far left) made history by becoming the youngest player to take to the field in a Norwegian premier league match in April
Just weeks after signing his first professional contract, Odegaard broke more records by becoming the youngest player to score in the league. Here he is pictured bottom left bowling with friends
Odegaard (pictured left in both photos) has also made three appearances for the Norwegian national team
The Norwegian sensation answered only in Norwegian during his press conference in Madrid yesterday, but will be joined at the Spanish club by his father who was also signed as a coach
Odegaard celebrates scoring for Stromsgodest in Norway in May 2014 at the age of just 15
Prominent European teams quickly became aware of his talent, and the adolescent began training with both Manchester United and Bayern Munich.
Aged 15 years and 117 days, the attacking midfielder made history by becoming the youngest player to take to the field in a Norwegian premier league match
Odegaard has played three times for Norway, including in a 2016 European Championship qualifier against Bulgaria
In April, the offensive midfielder, who is 15 years and 117 days old, created history by being the youngest player to play in a Norwegian Premier League game.
A few weeks after agreeing to his first professional deal, he set even another record by being the league’s youngest player to score.
Odegaard has subsequently made three appearances for the Norwegian national football team, but larger things were ahead for him.
According to Aftenposten, Per-Mathias Høgmo, the manager of Norway, “he has developed enormously in a short time.” I believe that he broke down walls that no one could have predicted would come down.
“It is amazing how he plays, how talented he is, how he thinks and makes decisions,” he continued.
Even Hans Erik, his father, predicted that a major continental team would eventually want to sign the 16-year-old.
Odegaard trained with Manchester City, Arsenal, and Liverpool, his favorite team, raising rumors that he would be relocating to England.
The developing talent was courted by Celtic, Ajax of the Netherlands, Bayern Munich, and Real Madrid; as part of the deal, Madrid also signed his father as a coach.
And rather than work out how he needed to change, he worked out that nothing needed to. The same shimmies, the same scans for space, the same upper body strength generated by timing and touch. Only now he’s doing it at the top of the Premier League.
Again, the trick is to make this all seem like it happened by happy accident. But then that too defines Odegaard. It is the curse of the insouciant creative midfielder to make people think that the touches, the dips, the passes and the vision are simply gifts from on high, and Odegaard suffers from that most because of his fame as a child.
He deserves better, a recognition that he has sidestepped roadblocks that have brought those before him to their knees and somehow left him extraordinarily level-headed.
That makes Odegaard the best person to captain Arsenal because he is the embodiment of the squad. There is a lot in this season that feels serendipitous: William Saliba’s loan and return, Mykhailo Mudryk vs Leandro Trossard, Eddie Nketiah taking his chance, Granit Xhaka’s redemption arc.
But this is a group of young men who have stayed true to themselves through adversity and come out the other side feeling like they can take on the world under a manager who makes them believe that world belongs to them.