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In the run-up to her 50th birthday, Ingrid Halseth made what would normally be considered an unusual request for somebody her age. She asked for a unicycle.
As a budding handball player in her youth before devoting more time to mastering alpine skiing – eventually a silver medallist at the downhill in Norway’s nationals – this actually felt a completely normal present.
‘She tried it twice and got it,’ Ingrid's husband Arne says. ‘And Sverre picked it up easily. It’s not fair. She has the skills which Sverre has inherited. They’re not from me!’
The Sverre in question is the couple’s son, 18-year-old Sverre Nypan, the most expensive footballer ever sold from Norway last summer when Manchester City fended off most of Europe in paying £12.5million to take the midfielder from Rosenborg, the record 26-time champions of his homeland.
The club, whose stadium stands 500 metres from the family home in Trondheim, had Nypan training with their first team at 14 and gave him a professional debut following one year later. He used to watch the first team every week and ended up scoring 14 times in 62 Eliteserien games for them, becoming the linchpin as he racked up more than 4,000 minutes before he turned 18.
Nypan is making his first appearance on many English radars on loan at Middlesbrough this season but his rise has been the talk of Norway for some time, breaking through at the same age as Martin Odegaard did, and head coach Stake Solbakken gave him a senior international bow during last week’s friendly against New Zealand.
18-year-old Sverre Nypan, who is on loan at Middlesbrough, became the most expensive player ever sold from Norway when City paid £12.5million for him in the summer
Nypan made his senior international bow for Norway during last week’s friendly against New Zealand
Arne, a top executive at Sparebank 1 and a Rosenborg board member, flew to Oslo hours before kick-off and had to dart back up that night. ‘I had to run for the train straight after – next stop Gardermoen airport,’ he smiles.
Nypan has a commemorative pendant from the occasion and had to give a speech to his new team-mates. No nerves, he insists, from his new place in Yarm, eight miles south of Middlesbrough – home for a first year in England. Second in the Championship, Boro seem a good fit for his loan deal. Rob Edwards has only gradually introduced the teenager so far - just seven appearances and only two starts - but the rave reviews are in already.
‘All the fans I meet ask if I’ve tried Parmo,’ says Nypan of the chicken and cheese dish that originates from Middlesbrough, while wearing those orange-tinted glasses brought to prominence by Erling Haaland that help you get to sleep. ‘I probably should. After a game maybe, we’ll see.
‘It’s a lot of running in Norway and it’s similar here. Difficult, but a nice challenge. It’s why I came to Boro, to get this challenge. I knew the physicality here is really high, almost the same as the Premier League. It’s good if you can get used to this.’
City studied the market for the perfect landing spot and wanted Nypan to have an experience as close to the Premier League as possible. They flirted with the Bundesliga before choosing Boro, whom they are forming a decent relationship with. Academy products Micah Hamilton, Terrell Agyemang and Morgan Rogers have all ended up at the Riverside in recent seasons.
And the interesting aspect of that is if Nypan follows through on City’s plan and muscles into Pep Guardiola’s squad in the future, then he may do so as 'homegrown'. That qualification comes after three consistent years playing in the UK and might well be the value of making their move so early.
‘Training with the first team at 14 is not normal,’ says Rosenborg’s technical director Per Jarle Dalum. ‘After the first session, he was already staying behind with the strikers, delivering crosses for them. There were already a couple of top players getting their eyes up and saying, “Wow! Who is this kid?” He was eager to learn.’
Dalum was Nypan’s coach when he joined Rosenborg’s after-school programme, with football circles across the region talking up a youngster who had scored 45 goals in 17 games for his neighbourhood club, Nardo FK.
Nypan has been the talk of Norwegian football for some time
Nypan faced Manchester United in a pre-season friendly in July 2024, while the red side of Manchester were pushing hard to sign him
There has been some inescapable mania around him, in much the same way as Odegaard faced before joining Real Madrid in 2015.
Odegaard’s ascent was more sudden in that respect, while Nypan bided his time. Arne had rejected overtures from 40 agents before fielding a call from one of Haaland’s close circle asking if his agent, Rafaela Pimenta, could approach in the autumn of 2023. Arne’s plea for patience for his son’s career was matched by Pimenta, who said she didn’t want to hear from the family for at least a year.
The next summer came around and it was Manchester United pushing. The answer was no. Flatter rejections were delivered to the Old Firm and several Spanish and German clubs, who soon realised they were shopping in the wrong store.
‘I’ll be honest: I’m super impressed with how Sverre coped,’ says Rosenborg coach Alfred Johansson of the interest in him. ‘Obviously he’s a human being and young – it was affecting him - but in those moments, other young boys would have completely caved from that attention and pressure.
'He didn’t. When that window closed, he had an amazing autumn. His performances exploded.’
Last winter came a tour of Britain. Sat in Haaland’s box when City played Chelsea, checking in at Aston Villa and Arsenal. It seesawed, City appearing to have missed out, before director of football Hugo Viana’s pathway plan convinced Team Nypan that Manchester was the move.
Versatility can’t help his long-term chances either. A central midfielder, a box-to-box No 8, seems to be his calling, although Edwards has had him on the right of a striker at Boro.
There is an Ilkay Gundogan-like desire to crash late into the area. And a willingness to carry and drive after taking possession off defenders in a way that Bernardo Silva or Tijjani Reijnders might. Sounds like the modern top-flight midfielder.
Nypan is being introduced slowly by Rob Edwards at Middlesbrough, but he is making waves
The attacking midfielder is a perfectionist who is equally adept with both feet
Johansson tried him on the wing in a friendly last year. ‘Sverre has this power one-on-one,’ he says. ‘It made sense but the thing for me was that he wasn’t on the ball enough – we had to move him into the centre of the park because his quality was killer.’
Johansson then offers that David Silva and Juan Mata made their way in the bigger leagues as wingers before migrating central. Nypan has even played as a false nine.
There is an absolute certainty to those who know Nypan. It’d be strange if there wasn’t, of course, but it feels unequivocal. City are deploying former Wolves midfielder Phil Robinson, ex-Wrexham striker Gary Worthington and psychologist Barney Wren to watch over various aspects of his development and loan experience on Teeside.
Ingrid has taken a year’s sabbatical as a physio to regularly fly over. The family – including sister Johanne, a 22-year-old professional handball player for Molde – were over in a box for September’s Manchester derby after watching the youngest at Preston North End the day before.
He’s happy living alone, learning how to cook. He’s doing steak and sweet potatoes when he chats to Daily Mail Sport and claims to be experimental in the kitchen. He is a very capable cross-country skier, perfecting the art up at the family cabin in the mountains, and excelled at gymnastics and volleyball. He did try handball but binned the idea after a couple of sessions.
‘Sverre can sit in front of the piano with YouTube trying to learn for four hours at a time,’ Arne says. ‘He’s not especially good!’
Sverre wishes his father hadn’t divulged that and suggests he may buy one for Yarm. ‘Having something that isn’t football is healthy,’ he adds, before saying more generally: ‘Your body is your avatar. It’s no good having a brain if you can’t do it with your body.’
That does lend itself to one character trait that keeps cropping up. Nypan cannot let things lie – proven by a genuine ability to play off either foot in a way that you just wouldn’t know which is dominant. Dalum reveals that as a kid, Nypan was telling team-mates to clean up the dressing room properly or do their shirts and socks correctly.
Johansson says: ‘There is this exceptional drive to become better, turning over every rock on the road. There aren’t many people out there like that. He wants to watch a lot of video of himself – and not always something good. That separates him from many of the best ones I’ve worked with. “Listen Alfred, you don’t have to show me that goal – show me the clips where I failed”.
‘There is this exceptional drive to become better, turning over every rock on the road. He wants to watch a lot of video of himself – and not always something good'
Nypan is living alone in Middlesbrough and is learning how to cook. When Daily Mail Sport speaks to him it's steak and sweet potatoes
‘He’d come to you after with his own reflections. He’s a perfectionist and that is one of the biggest pros but can be one of the biggest cons when negative things eat you up. I’ve had to help him look at the bright side sometimes!’
There surely cannot be any other side. Nypan ought to blossom further in the Championship and will be studying Guardiola’s team when they face Villarreal on Tuesday, hoping to be there with them on Champions League nights in the future.
Perhaps the link-up with City was written in the stars when he was first called to lace up his boots with Rosenborg’s seniors as a kid. The coach then? The renowned Age Hareide.
The club that brought him to England as a defender in the 1980s? Manchester City.
