Forgotten, ignored and overlooked – NRK Sport – Sports news, results and broadcasting schedule

She is the best in the world. But you wouldn’t believe it.

You rarely read news about Caroline Graham Hansen. We know that she plays for Barcelona, ​​and that she does well, but in Norway she is still remembered for the outburst against her own team during the World Cup last year.

She never wins awards such as the Ballon d’Or, which is given to the world’s best player.

But Graham Hansen now delivers figures for Barcelona that surpass Lionel Messi.

No one has wreaked so much havoc in the limelight without being seen.

Tonight, it may be Brann who gets to feel it – again:

Cheat code

Neither in Norway nor abroad does it seem that people understand what Graham Hansen accomplishes.

Martin Ødegaard has 16 goals in 36 games for Arsenal this season. That’s good for a midfielder who also works hard, and he deserves the tribute as one of the best in the Premier League. But let’s say he had given up a little more.

Let’s say that Ødegaard had 51 goal points in 29 games. These are numbers taken out of a video game, and with such a cheat code, Arsenal would have strolled to the league title.

Graham Hansen supplies these figures. She is this cheat code.

Goal: 26
Goals scored: 25

And she has been since September.

The supreme in Europe

No player in Europe comes close to this productivity.

In the Spanish league, Graham Hansen has 17 goals and 16 assists, which is the most in both categories.

She is involved in more than two goals per full league game she plays, something even Messi did not manage during his long career at Barcelona.

Who has the most goal points in the Champions League? Caroline Graham Hansen.

She has led Barcelona well on the way to a fifth straight league title, a new cup final and yet another semi-final in Europe. It is almost impossible to play better.

Now people are starting to talk about the Ballon d’Or.

This year, yes?

Which leads us to one of football’s biggest mysteries.

The Ballon d’Or is awarded by France Football magazine to the world’s best player, and is based on votes from players, coaches and journalists. 10 days ago, the website Goal ranked the favorites for 2024, and Graham Hansen was at the top.

On Wednesday, the Catalan sports newspaper L’Esportiu published a front page with a picture of Graham Hansen and the following headline:

– This year, yes?

The headline makes it sound like Graham Hansen has been close to winning the Ballon d’Or before. She has won the Norwegian Golden Ball, the prize for Norway’s best player, four out of the last five years. But this leads us to one of football’s greatest mysteries:

Not only has she never won the international Ballon d’Or.

She has never been nominated.

Eight straight league titles

It is France Football that makes the list of players who can receive votes, and Graham Hansen’s name has never been there.

Not even last year, when they nominated 30 players.

It’s okay that she hasn’t won the Ballon d’Or. Graham Hansen has struggled with injuries and has often ended up in the shadow of his teammates, who have won four of the five awards since the Ballon d’Or was first awarded to women: First Hegerberg (2018), and then Barcelona’s playmakers Alexia Putellas (2021, 2022) and Aitana Bonmatí (2023).

But the fact that Graham Hansen lacks a nomination is a scandal.

For five years, Graham Hansen has delivered steadily for the world’s best team. When she joined Barcelona in 2019, they had not won the league for four years. Now they are on course for the fifth straight, as well as a fourth straight Champions League final.

Before that, Graham Hansen had three straight league titles with Wolfsburg in Germany.

In short: The team that has Graham Hansen wins.

(Well, apart from Norway then.)

Nor has she received much credit in Fifa’s player of the year award. She ended up in eighth place in 2020, and in the last two years she has not been nominated.

From a purely sporting point of view, it makes no sense.

The newspapers know

Those who follow Barcelona know how good Graham Hansen is.

Barcelona coach Jonatan Giráldez calls her one of the best in the world. The press in Catalonia writes about the figures she delivers. The British newspaper The Guardian names the 100 best players in the world, and Graham Hansen has been among the top eight for four years in a row.

Now in January she was number seven.

– She is still overlooked when it comes to the individual awards, wrote the newspaper this year.

In 2021, Graham Hansen was unstoppable when Barcelona won the treble. People were so confused that she was overlooked for the Ballon d’Or, she even took to Twitter to say she didn’t care.

– To anyone wondering: It’s going perfectly well, she wrote.

This week, Graham Hansen told The Guardian that she has stopped caring about individual awards. They don’t help the team anyway, she says, and it’s true.

But that does not make the case any less unfair.

Difficult to be Norwegian

The Norwegian national team has undoubtedly damaged Graham Hansen’s chances.

Every year there is an EC and WC, she is weaker than her Spanish teammates. These championships are particularly important in women’s football, because few watch the matches from the domestic leagues. Only during major international tournaments does the world follow.

Graham Hansen is also not concerned with building himself up as a brand. She does her job and then she goes home. On Instagram, she has 258,000 followers, while Bonmatí has ​​1.6 million and Putellas has 3.3 million.

Popularity should have no say when France Football makes its lists.

But what other arguments could they have?

Deserves better

Perhaps this farce is reason enough not to take such awards so seriously.

On the men’s side, Erling Braut Haaland was cheated out of Fifa’s award in January. The award did not cover the 2022 World Cup, and yet players gave interviews where they said they had voted for the winner, Lionel Messi, “because he had won the World Cup”.

In any case, Graham Hansen and Gullballen are a special case, because it is not about votes. It is France Football that has not nominated her.

But they have to do that this year. If not, they will make the Ballon d’Or a joke. Putellas has struggled with injury, and even Bonmatí’s magic does not put Graham Hansen in the shade.

The girl from Tåsen plays so well that she can no longer be ignored.

It is uncertain whether she will actually win the Ballon d’Or. Whatever Barcelona does in the Champions League, Bomnatí can win the Olympics in Paris, where Norway is not participating, and she has already won the Nations League with Spain.

But Graham Hansen should end up high – very high – when the votes are counted in October.

If only for the sake of justice.