How Norway’s first female soccer president brought the men’s team back to prominence

Sport admin June 26, 2026 0 Comments

How Norway’s first female soccer president brought the men’s team back to prominence

Lise Klaveness can’t seem to walk two paces through a crowd of Norwegian soccer fans without getting stopped for a selfie or an autograph.

Once a star on the Norwegian women’s national team, Klaveness is now perhaps best known as the president of the Norwegian Football Federation, a role for which she is recognized over and over on a recent afternoon in Boston.

In celebration of the Norwegian men’s team qualifying for its first World Cup since 1998, an estimated 10,000 Norwegians traveled to Boston for the team’s games in Foxborough: a 4-1 win over Iraq on June 16, and Friday’s game against France at 3 p.m.

And it seems everyone she walks past wants to shake her hand.

Klaveness took over the top job at the federation in 2022, and returned the men’s national team to prominence by focusing on the country’s grassroots programs to create sustainable success at the elite level.

Her philosophy is rooted in a belief that soccer should be for everyone: A stronger grassroots youth program leads to a better national team, she said, and a more accessible and inclusive sport at all levels creates unity through shared experiences.

“Even though I’ve worked hard for equality my whole career, I would say it’s always come organically, and it’s always come from a place where I think it’s also what’s best for everyone,” Klaveness said. “The fight is not to just have representation, it’s to make it better for everyone.”

On the women’s side, Norway has had no such trouble qualifying for the World Cup; it has played in every women’s tournament since its inception in 1991 — and Klaveness had a hand in that, too.

She earned 73 caps for Norway, including two appearances at Gillette Stadium during the 2003 Women’s World Cup.

Related: Sullivan: Can the United States actually win the World Cup?

When she retired from playing, Klaveness worked as a lawyer and judge. She returned to soccer as a TV pundit shortly after retiring from the game, then spent four years as the NFF’s technical director before her election as president in March 2022.

She’s one of just a handful of female soccer federation presidents in the world, and one of two female members of the UEFA executive committee. But being in the minority is something she’s gotten used to over her soccer career.

Around age 13, Klaveness set her heart on attending an elite soccer high school but was denied entry on the basis that it was for boys only. She called her local government and the national equality minister, wrote letters, and appeared on radio programs to plead her case.

Three weeks later, she enrolled in the school as the only girl on the boys’ team.

“That was the start of a belief that leadership is about being a bit concrete, knowing that if you have an obstacle, analyze it and find a solution,” she said. “It’s not just about [gender] equality — it’s about all imbalances. What can you do to make it more accessible?”

When Klaveness began her stint as president in 2022, she focused on investing in the national team academy and top club academies, while building up the country’s grassroots program in a way that feels authentic to Norwegian culture.

Norway earned international press during the 2026 Winter Olympics for its youth sports philosophy of encouraging as many people as possible to play sports for as long as possible, while still allowing the best players to develop in a healthy way.

By qualifying for the World Cup, the men’s national team proved to Klaveness that she’s doing something right.

“It’s nice to tell people around the world that it’s possible to compete with such a wide and socially inclusive model,” she said. “When you go to the world stage, nothing can beat the common feeling of everybody watching something live, and they’re all in the same jersey.

“It means the world to us. It means our model works.”