StabaekFotball

Stabæk football club was founded on March 16, 1912 as part of the Norwegian multi-sporting club known as Stabæk Idrettsforening (Stabæk IF). Stabæk IF is located in the municipality of Bærum, a suburb approximately ten kilometres to the west of the centre of Oslo, the capital city of Norway.

Stabæk IF has a history of producing sporting teams which manage to compete at the highest level in Norway, although in recent years, it is football for which the club has become most known.

The modern history of Stabæk football club really began as recently as 1990, when a small group of visionary football fanatics had the ambitious dream of turning their lowly Norwegian fourth division team into a top football club. A plan was devised and put into action, producing immediate results. In the space of the next four consecutive years, Stabæk achieved promotion from the fourth division to the Eliteserien, the Norwegian equivalent of the English Premier League.

After their arrival in the top flight, Stabæk set about proving that the meteoric rise through the divisions had been no fluke. The first year in the Eliteserien saw the club finishing in ninth place, followed by sixth and fifth positions in the respective following two seasons.

Stabæk continued to consolidate their position in the top division and in 1998, the club took third place in the league and won their first major honour by winning the Norwegian Cup Final, a feat which qualified them for their first taste of European competition.

Between 1999 and 2002, Stabæk showed remarkable consistency, finishing every year in fifth place or higher. In 2003 the club had an especially good season, finishing in third place and again qualifying for Europe.

It is possible that a degree of complacency set in following this string of good results, because in 2004, almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. In the year when Stabæk were celebrating ten years in the Eliteserien, the club was humiliated in Europe, finished second to last in the league and was relegated to the first division.

Relegation came as a shock to the club who since 1990, had only known success. However, Stabæk used the year in the next best division well, rebuilding the team and further developing the fast, technical playing style which was starting to become Stabæk’s trademark.

Stabæk won the first division in 2005 by a clear margin and were again promoted to the Norwegian premiership, where they immediately put the hiccups of the previous seasons behind them and finished the 2006 campaign in a solid fifth place.

In 2007, Stabæk again stamped their mark firmly on the Eliterserien, taking their first ever second place in the league and reaching the semi-final of the Norwegian Cup.

2008 saw the culmination of the rebuilding work that had begun in the first division in 2005, and was to be the most memorable in the history of the club.

Fielding a finely balanced team of accomplished players and playing a style of entertaining, attacking football, somewhat unique in their homeland, Stabæk won the Norwegian football Championship for the first time ever and reached the final of the Norwegian Cup.

2008 was both the end of an era and the beginning of a new one for Stabæk.

From 1990 to 2008, Stabæk had gone from being a virtually unknown football club in the fourth division to becoming the football Champions of Norway and had experienced rapid growth in this time. Nadderud Stadium, which had served so well as their home ground, had become too small and run down for the club and their growing supporter base.

The building of Telenor Arena, the club’s new, unique indoor football arena, was complete and it was time for Stabæk to move to a new home.