The commentator’s reaction to the defeat of the British entered the history of the tournament.
The 1982 World Cup for the England team, from which they flew out in the second group round, did not work out even at the qualifying stage. In the group with the Hungarians, Romanians, Swiss and Norwegians, the players from the Foggy Albion hardly scratched out the second place, which allowed them to reach the final round of the World Cup.
The British lost even to the main outsider of the group – the Norwegian team. And the epic speech of the commentator of this match even went down in history.
Björge Lillelien blew everyone away!
“Your boys were beaten like hell!”
Since winning the 1966 World Cup, the England team has plunged into hopeless melancholy. At the 1970 World Cup, the British reached the quarterfinals, where they lost to the German national team, and then missed the planet’s main football tournament twice in a row – in 1974 and 1978 they did not qualify. In 1982, England finally managed to qualify for the World Cup held in Spain, but were eliminated after the second round without losing a single match.
And the British had serious problems already at the selection stage – Ron Greenwood’s team managed to lose to the Swiss, Norwegians and Romanians. And only one point ahead of the latter in the fight for second place in the qualifying group. The game with Norway became the most memorable, and rather not because of the sensational defeat of England, but because of the post-match speech of the Norwegian commentator Bjerge Lillelen.
By the middle of the qualifying round for the 1982 World Cup, the Norwegians no longer claimed to reach the final part of the tournament. However, England, having lost points in meetings with Romania and Switzerland, needed a bloody victory to fight for the final round of the World Cup. On September 9, 1981, Norway was the first to concede at the Ullevol home stadium, but already in the first half it managed to level the score, and then completely take the lead. In the second half, the British fell on the gates of the Scandinavian team, but they could not hit them.
A photo: from the match Norway – England September 9, 1981
The mere fact of Norway’s sensational victory would have been enough to create noise throughout Europe. However, the commentator Lillelien, who worked at this meeting, increased the excitement around the triumph of the Norwegians to a cosmic level. After the final whistle, Lillelien gave an enthusiastic monologue about the victory, stating that Norway had defeated “the birthplace of giants – England”.
We are the best in the world! We are the best in the world! We beat England 2-1 in football! It’s just incredible! Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana – we beat them all. We have defeated them all.
Maggie Thatcher, can you hear me? Maggie Thatcher, I have a message for you in the midst of an election campaign. We knocked England out of the World Cup. Maggie Thatcher, as they say in the boxing bars near Madison Square Garden in New York: we beat your boys like hell! Bjerge shouted into the microphone.
The emotional speech of the Norwegian commentator spread all over the world, turning into a meme – hundreds of publications published quotes from Bjerge’s speech in their newspapers. Lillelien’s monologue made him a world star, and in 2002 The Observer even called Bjerge’s speech the best in the history of sports commentary.
Unfortunately, 5 years after the collapse of world fame, Lillelien passed away due to cancer at the age of 60. However, the famous Norwegian monologue is remembered and loved to be used to this day, changing it in every possible way to fit current events.
