Norway’s Hegerberg seeks to inspire as Euros enter knockout phase

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The women’s game has come a long way since the last time Norway played a knockout game at the Euros, agonisingly losing the 2013 final 1-0 to Germany with a callow, 18-year-old Ada Hegerberg, now team captain, starting up front.

At that tournament in Sweden, a combined total of 28,814 spectators saw Norway’s group games, a number dwarfed by the 34,063 who saw their 2025 opener, a 2-1 win over hosts Switzerland in which Hegerberg equalised with a bullet header, and the 30-year-old has played a greater role than most in the growth of the game.

“You’ve got to take care of the next generation as well. We’re here to inspire, we’re here to be open, and that’s what we want to do,” Hegerberg told Reuters at a training session open to fans near the team’s base in Neuchatel where locals had come in their droves to watch.

Together with vice-captain Caroline Graham Hansen and former captain Maren Mjelde, Hegerberg came so close to winning in 2013, but German keeper Nadine Angerer saved two penalties to thwart the young stars.

“Me and Caro (Graham Hansen), we haven’t talked a lot about that game when we were younger, because I don’t think we realised then what an opportunity that was. But we talk about it today and we’re like, damn it, we were one goal away from winning a Euros,” Hegerberg explained.
“And I think people tend to forget that, but you know it was an incredible experience. Things have changed a lot since, football has changed a lot, but, yeah, it’s starting to become a long, long time ago, and we’ve experienced a whole deal after that.”

To say that Hegerberg has experienced a lot since then is something of an understatement; she has won 10 French league titles and six Champions League titles with Olympique Lyonnais and a slew of individual awards including the first women’s Ballon d’Or in 2018. hildren in the past 22 years.