Few people, let alone women, have made the transition from national team player to president of their national football association. Lise Klaveness of Norway is an exception.
During the FIFA congress in Doha, Qatar in 2022, Lise Klaveness, president of the Norwegian Football Association, gave a speech that sent shock waves through the football world:
"In 2010, the World Cup was awarded by FIFA in unacceptable ways with unacceptable consequences...Our members do demand change, they question the ethics in sport and insist on transparency. We must listen! We cannot ignore the calls for change."
Previously, only activists or whistleblowers had dared to talk publicly about issues such as the rights of migrant workers, LGBTQI rights, gender equity, and governance reform. Among the football leaders inside FIFA, Klaveness was seen as a nuisance, and she was told to keep quiet.
But among football fans, primarily in Norway, but also in other parts of the world, she was perceived as a breath of fresh air.
After the speech, Klaveness has continued her work, trying to reform FIFA from the inside. But how much can one person do, in today's football world?
Football writer and journalist Marius Lien followed Klaveness closely for one year, from January to December 2023. Through FIFA and UEFA congresses, the World Cup in New Zealand and Australia and travels around her home country Norway. The result is a book that provides deep insight into how the football world works in the midst of the Gianni Infantino era.
Marius Lien is a journalist and writer. He started is career in journalism in 1999, and football was among his preferred subjects from the beginning.Since then he has written about football, literature, film and music for several newspapers and outlets in Norway. He worked as a culture journalist in the weekly newspaper Morgenbladet for more than ten years. In 2009 he co-founded the football magazine Josimar, with his friend Frode da Costa-Lia. Josimar has since then grown into a leading publication for criticism of FIFA and of the economic and moral exploitation of modern football, receiving several prices for its independent journalism.Marius has published eleven books, primarily non-fiction about football and music, as well as one mini-novel. In 2014 he was shortlisted for the Norwegian literary critic's prize for Best Non Fiction, for his book about Brazilian Football.Marius has studied anthropology, contemporary religion, and film history. He prefers to call his method 'anthropological journalism', and his texts have been translated into several languages, among them English, German, Portuguese and Swedish.In his spare time, Marius likes to play football, and he tries to keep up with the youngsters in the lower, local leagues in the south-east of Norway.
