Martin Odegaard checks in at Real Madrid and pushes all the right buttons

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/jan/22/martin-odegaard-real-madrid-norway-bernabeu

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The day that Iker Casillas was called up to the Real Madrid first team, dashing to Barajas airport to catch a plane for Norway, Martin Odegaard hadn’t even been born. Now, they are team-mates.

On Thursday morning, Odegaard made the journey in the other direction and in a private jet. The kid who made his competitive debut for Stromsgodset at 15 years and 117 days and first played for Norway at 15 years and 253 days has joined the 10-times European champions, aged 16 years and 36 days. If the rise has been rapid – “quicker and better than I could have expected”, as Odegaard put it here – the selection process has been an exhaustive one. He has started only 15 games in Norway’s first division, scoring five times and providing seven assists, and it is only nine months since he first ran on to the pitch wearing No67, but the casting has been careful and the suitors many.

According to his translator, Odegaard described himself fairly unhelpfully “as a player who likes to have the ball; I like to touch it and I like to kick it”. Videos of him, running on small screens dotted round the room, show a left-footed playmaker of startling skill. “At times you need a superstar and at 15, he’s the nearest thing we have,” a former coach, David Nielsen, has said of him.

He is Norway’s youngest debutant and goalscorer, has three caps and a national TV channel cheered “at last we have one of them” – them being Messi or Maradona, Zlatan or Laudrup. Ronny Deila, the Celtic coach who gave Odegaard a league debut, describes him as special and Europe’s biggest clubs agreed: Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester United and Manchester City were among the pursuers.

In the end it was Madrid he chose, although he supported Liverpool and admired Messi – something that was cause for great satisfaction in Madrid. Getting a potentially great player is one thing; getting him ahead of Barcelona and Bayern is better yet. This was Odegaard’s decision and he had quite a choice.

“Madrid is the best option for my development,” he said. “This is a dream come true, it’s unbelievable.” Asked the inevitable question – Messi or Ronaldo? – he smiled and said: “Ronaldo so far.”

He has signed a six-year deal. The fee has not been disclosed, with Madrid claiming that it is under €3m (£2.2m)but Norwegian sources say that if simple objectives are met it will be well more than €6m, perhaps even as high as €8m.

Odegaard’s salary has not been revealed either, but some reports suggest as much as €80,000 a week. He will train with the first team and join them for pre-season next summer; in the meantime he will play with Real Madrid’s B team, Castilla, who play in the third tier, the regionalised Segunda División B. But the director of institutional relations, Emilio Butragueño, said: “If Carlo Ancelotti wants to call on him, he is available.”

The expectation is the Real manager will do so, if only to avoid arresting the Norwegian’s development. Butragueño also confirmed that Odegaard’s father will take up a coaching role at the club. Butragueño described Hans Erik Odegaard as highly qualified and his son said that he had been a key part of his success. “I have trained a lot and my father, he is a very good coach and has been really important with me. I have trained a lot and I have trained the right things.”

Odegaard Sr sat in the front row. Behind him the press room at Real Madrid’s Valdebebas training ground was packed, the expectation enormous. This was not the first time father and son have been here: Martin has been shown around with his father, a former player at Stromsgodset for more than a decade before becoming a qualified coach. He had trained with the first team, too. They had been impressed, they said: not just by his talent but by his temperament too. That will be important.

“There are a lot of people here …” one question began. Odegaard smiled. “So,” his inquisitor continued, “do you fear the pressure?” Another smile: “I don’t really feel the pressure but it is quite different to play for Real Madrid and Stromsgodset.”

All the more so when you have only just turned 16. And there was no escaping his age: Odegaard is 16 and looks it, a touch of the wholesome boy band about him, a small blond kid before the media, only Butragueño for company. His age is part of the excitement, the sense that he can get even better. It is also, of course, part of the doubts: signing him is just the start. His development will be watched closely. Yet he and his father made that their central concern and the impression here was of a boy of maturity, normality and tranquillity.

“We have many, many hopes placed in you,” Butragueño said.

Talk about pressure. And when he had walked in, over an hour late – kids these days, huh? – the cameras engulfed him. They had leapt up three times already, three false alarms. Eventually at 2.41pm the door opened and out came his family with the translator who took up position in a glass-fronted booth at the back. Then, two minutes later, Odegaard appeared, dressed his age – a stripy top and jeans. He did not seem concerned or overawed. He smiled as he caught the eye of people he knew in the audience and there were a fair few of them dotted around.

If there was not much content in his answers, given in Norwegian, not English as expected, then there was a quiet confidence, reinforcing the impression of control given by the casting process.

This was not a decision taken lightly. “It was the best for my development,” he stated three times in the first three answers and, although not expansive, it was convincing.

Odegaard has 62 days to become the youngest goalscorer in Spanish football but there was no apparent hurry, nor any sense of anxiety at the likely limits to first-team opportunities – not now at least, although that issue may await in the future.

Nothing was said about potential loans in order for the attacking midfielder to gain experience and continue developing but Madrid’s structure is an advantage, all the more so if Castilla can win promotion to the second division, and they are top.

He does not have bad teachers either: his coach in the first team will be Ancelotti and his coach with Castilla will be Zinedine Zidane, who himself is being groomed for the first-team role.

“It will be a combination. I will train a bit with the first team and a bit with Castilla. If Ancelotti wants me, I will be really happy. If not, I will play at Castilla and I will be really happy too,” Odegaard said.

“It is an advantage to be able to [join a club that] has a second team with a very good level, with a very good coach who was one of the best players in the world.” What, though, of his Spanish? Another smile. “I did a bit of Spanish at school in Norway, but I don’t speak well.”