Leo Ostigard is describing how, at the age of 16, he told Ole Gunnar Solskjaer that he should be playing in his first team at Molde.
The defender had been in the reserves at the Norwegian club where Solskjaer was an iconic figure, a former player in his second spell as manager.
It was not enough to satisfy the ambitious Ostigard. He tells The Athletic: “When I was 16, I knocked on his door at the stadium, telling him I wanted to have a conversation. It’s not often a 16-year-old does that. He’s a big man in Norway. Then, I had a meeting with him.
“He was sitting on one sofa; the coach on one sofa and the trainer of my second team on another sofa. I was sitting on my own sofa, so it was three against one. I was just very honest. ‘I want to train with the first team, I feel I’ve shown you enough to do that now. If not, I’ll try to find other places to go. Just be very honest with me now. If you think I’m good enough, give me a chance. If not tell me. I don’t want you to lie to me’.
“I think he likes that.”
Ostigard’s direct approach worked. Solskjaer made him captain for Molde’s pre-season training camp in Marbella, where he featured alongside future Borussia Dortmund goal machine Erling Haaland.
“All of the players were 25 to 30; experienced players,” Ostigard says. “I was captain, playing centre-back, screaming to all the players. I don’t know if they liked it but it was a special feeling.
“After pre-season, we had a conversation. He said I would play some games but maybe not every game. I was ready to play every game. Then I went on loan to Viking in the second division for half a year, because I wanted to play. I needed to play game after game, and then Brighton signed me in the summer.”
You will have gathered by now that Ostigard, currently on loan from Brighton and Hove Albion to Championship side Coventry City for the season, is a confident young man with considerable faith in his ability.
How does the 21-year-old look back on his audacious meeting with the Manchester United manager?
“I don’t think he ever had a young player coming to him like that,” Ostigard says. “I was just so honest. I think he likes that when I look back at it now.
“You need to do something sometimes in football to help yourself. It’s not every time that the coaches are helping you, so maybe you have to have a conversation to say ‘Hello, I’m here, I want to be better and I want to be part of your team’. It’s not so easy in football. These things have helped me to be where I am now.
“I have some friends who were at the same level as me but they don’t have the balls to go and knock on the door. That can be the end of a career or the beginning of a career. It’s brutal — but it is what it is.”
Ostigard displays a maturity beyond his years in conversation with The Athletic via Zoom. He has grown up quickly, travelling by bus from Andalsnes, his home town an hour’s journey from Molde, to train with the club as a 14-year-old schoolboy.
He’d left home by the time he was 16. Ostigard moved to Molde to share an apartment with his older sister Rikke, a national-standard handball player forced into premature retirement last year due to knee injuries.
Ostigard’s first loan away from Brighton’s under-23s last season, accompanied by his mother, also accelerated his development. He was in Bundesliga 2 with Hamburg-based St Pauli, the cult club of German football. St Pauli’s pirate skull-and-crossbones symbol is indicative of a politically engaged club with a fervent, diverse fan base at the Millerntor Stadium.
Ostigard says: “I didn’t know that much about the club. Mats Moller Daehli was playing there, from Norway. I spoke to him before I went there. I watched some clips on YouTube of the fans, thinking ‘Wow, what a club’.
“They were interested in me six months before I went there, then they chose another player. I was very angry after that; ‘Fucking hell, I want to play there’, and then they brought me in. It was meant to be.”
The Hamburg derby against the city’s other club — the six-time German champions — is one of the most intense rivalries in the country. Ostigard had been restricted to one late substitute appearance by a calf injury when, to his surprise, he was named by St Pauli’s then manager Jos Luhukay in the starting XI at the team hotel ahead of Hamburg’s visit in September 2019, played in front of a packed crowd of nearly 30,000 supporters.
“I couldn’t breathe,” says Ostigard. “Mats had showed us videos of how much the derby means to the fans. It’s just a crazy thing in the city. I said to Mats, ‘You have to help me now because I don’t know what I should do’. I was 19 years old, centre-back, first game against Hamburg; I was calling my mother, telling her I was starting. What the fuck was going on!?
“Taking the bus to the stadium, I saw thousands of police cars and policemen. It was so big. I hadn’t played in a game like that before. We won 2-0 and I couldn’t have had a better start. It will be one of the biggest games in my career; so special. There was a fight in the city the day before involving 300-400 people. It was just a crazy experience.
“When I went home, I could barely speak to my mother. My head was so full of emotion.”
Ostigard inadvertently became the centre of attention in the reverse clash with Hamburg five months later, in February 2020, in front of a 57,000-crowd at the Volksparkstadion, another of his 29 appearances for St Pauli.
“We won 2-0 as well,” he explains. “Just out of emotion, I kicked the Hamburg flag when we scored. That had been something they had done for the last 10 years, kicking the flag. A goalkeeper from St Pauli (Benedikt Pliquett) was attacked by some Hamburg fans when he did it.
“I didn’t know. A picture of me kicking the flag was everywhere in St Pauli. They were asking me after the game about knowing the history of the club. I said no!
“The team went out after the game for a party. All the fans were outside the restaurant, knocking on the windows, and then we went outside celebrating with them. It was just like a big family; quite special. I still watch some of their games. It’s just a good feeling to watch them, I miss the club.”
Ostigard had Brighton team-mate Viktor Gyokeres on loan with him at St Pauli. They have been reunited again at Coventry following the Swedish forward’s loan switch from Championship rivals Swansea during the January transfer window.
It’s another unique experience for Ostigard, playing in an empty stadium because of COVID-19 for a club without a home ground. Coventry share St Andrew’s with West Midlands neighbours Birmingham City, having failed to reach an agreement to remain at the Ricoh Arena with rugby union club landlords Wasps.
Ostigard lives in a flat in Leamington Spa, a short journey from the training ground. “The only shit thing is you have to drive for one hour to Birmingham to play (home) games,” he says. “It feels like an away game.
“To not play on your home ground is a weird feeling but it feels like our home now. We are quite strong at Birmingham. We haven’t lost so many games there.
“They have some flags on the stands but I remember the feeling last year at Millerntor in St Pauli, it was incredible; so like home. It was hard for teams playing against us to win. It’s not the same here now. I miss that, of course.”
It also took a while for Ostigard to adjust to playing without supporters after his spell in Germany.
“It was a big difference,” he says. “In the first part of the season, I struggled because I was used to the fans at St Pauli. It felt like you were missing something and your head was not 100 per cent switched on because when you have the fans there, you don’t need to talk so much to yourself.
“Before a game now, you have to be mentally ready. Before a game at St Pauli, we nearly had a full stadium for the warm-up. You could just do the thing you were used to — now you have to mentally prepare more. I miss it so much but it’s easier now than at the start of the season.”
Coventry, promoted as champions after League One was curtailed last season by the pandemic, are putting up a good fight under Mark Robins in their quest to stay in the Championship. Robins, like Solskjaer, was a forward at Manchester United during his playing career.
“He is quite clear what he wants and the way he wants to play football,” Ostigard says. “When, for example, we don’t play the best football or play some long balls, then he comes in at half-time and says ‘I’m not here to play like that. I want us to have the ball and score nice goals’.
“It’s hard to always play out from the back in the Championship because the pressure is coming so fast and you have to be smart. He (Robins) is a nice guy. He had the experience of playing at United and being a striker there. He’s a good coach and also, his assistant (Adi Viveash) is quite direct. I like it when people are direct to me and say what they need. Then you can also be direct back to them.
“We don’t have the most money in the Championship, or the best players, but we have showed in many games we are a team that is hard to beat and we could have more points.
“We have played really well sometimes but we need to score the extra goal or not concede a shit goal.”
That last remark has also applied to Graham Potter’s Brighton in the Premier League on a number of occasions this season. Robins’ Coventry are a good match for Ostigard in many ways, also mirroring Potter’s philosophy of building from the back.
The Norwegian international from under-16s through to under-21 level has been learning to play as one of three central defenders, the system used more often than not by Potter.
“I feel like I’ve grown as a player,” says Ostigard. “At the start, it was a little bit different for me.
”I was playing right centre-back in a three. I haven’t played there so much. We had an injury, so I had to play there. After a while, I got used to it and I feel more comfortable. My main position is playing in a four at the back or in the middle of a three: that’s the position I like the most more than playing almost like a right-back sometimes.
“I can show more when I play there. I’ve played a little bit on the left in the national team but that was more in a defensive five.
“It’s the same style as at Brighton. We want to have possession, to play good football. I just have to play and to be calmer. It’s not easy to play when you are under pressure. I feel as though I have taken some good steps recently. I try to be a little bit risky in my play but not too risky, so that I can learn the role.”
Ostigard hopes to emerge at Brighton as an addition to a Premier League revival for players from his homeland.
Solskjaer was part of a golden age of Premier League players from Norway during his playing career at Manchester United from 1996 to 2007. Others included Liverpool left-back John Arne Riise, Solskjaer’s Old Trafford team-mate Ronny Johnsen and Blackburn midfielder Morten Gamst Pedersen.
“Before, we had many,” says Ostigard, says. “Now, it’s not the best period for Norway but we have Sander Berge at Sheffield United and Martin Odegaard has gone to Arsenal now.
“I’ve always had a dream to play in the Premier League. I hope that I can do that. If it’s not at Brighton, then at another place. Of course, it’s the toughest league in the world but you feel like you have a chance.
“I have showed some good things in the Championship. That’s maybe the test before you can play in the Premier League. I’m still young. The most important thing for me is to play as many games as I can.”
It will be crunch time at Brighton for Ostigard at the conclusion of his Coventry loan. He has been as straightforward with his parent club about how he sees his future as he was when speaking to Solskjaer at Molde.
“I don’t want to just sit on the bench or have no chance of playing,” he says. “I am not at Brighton to sit on the bench. That’s not the point for me.
“It’ll be interesting now. I don’t have long left on my contract (Ostigard’s current deal expires in June). They have an option year they can use but in the summer, I need to be sold or to sign a new contract. I’ve been very honest with them and they know they can’t lie to me or just say the right things. If they don’t need me, it’s better for me to go elsewhere.
“If I am going to sign a new deal for Brighton now, it will have to be because they want to play me or have a plan for me, so we will see.”
The difficulty for Ostigard at Brighton is the depth of competition in the centre of defence. Captain Lewis Dunk, £20 million record signing Adam Webster and Ben White, back from helping Leeds United to win the Championship last season, have been Potter’s main defensive trio this season, with Dan Burn providing competition and cover.
Matt Clarke is on loan at Derby County in the Championship for the second season in succession while Shane Duffy is on loan at Celtic. Arguably, Ostigard’s best chance of breaking through is if the highly-rated White attracts an offer Brighton cannot refuse.
An aerial presence in both boxes even though, at 6ft, he is relatively small for the position he plays, Ostigard says: “Of course they have many centre-backs but maybe if he (White) is going?
“Dan Burn can also play centre-back. It is hard but I feel it can suit me well because my main thing is to be in the box. I’m thinking not many players will beat me in the duels and in the air. That’s my main strength. I hope I get the chance. The difference between the Championship and the Premier League is big but I don’t feel as though it’s too big.”
No bigger than confronting Solskjaer at Molde when he was just a kid. Solskjaer’s agent is also Ostigard’s agent, so the Manchester United manager has maintained an interest in his career since advising him to sign for Brighton.
Ostigard reveals: “I was asking Ole before I went to Brighton, should I do it or not? He said, ‘Just do it and you are always welcome back if it doesn’t work out’.
“It was a good thing because I’ve had some good loans, to St Pauli and now Coventry. If you are in Norway for too long, you can be there forever.
“It’s hard to leave Norway at 25 to be at a Premier League club or a Championship club. You play on artificial pitches and the league is not the best. I’m happy that I took the chance.”
