Tower football!

Crossing from a rooftop 240ft up

As it turns out, scoring a goal from the top of a tower block is more difficult than you might think.

That was what Rosenborg discovered when they agreed to take part in one of the greatest sponsor days in history. No, chaps, you don’t have to spend hours doing product placement pictures today. Just get yourself to the top of that 240ft hotel overlooking the stadium and see if you can put the ball in the net.

“We have to carry out a lot of sponsor assignments during the season, but this one was fun and different,” Rosenborg winger Pal Andre Helland tells FFT.

It was all the idea of Scandic, the owners of the hotel located next to the Norwegian champions’ Lerkendal Stadion. Helland made his way up to the rooftop – tethered to a rope for safety, of course – before firing crosses down to his team-mates on the pitch below.

“You can imagine that, being on a hotel rooftop in a T-shirt, it was freezing cold!” the Norway international laughs. “We thought getting the passes into the box would be the hardest part. We were wrong – the hardest part was scoring.

“The players down on the ground described the ball as like a meteorite as it came flying towards them. Nobody wanted to put their head on it. A couple of the crosses landed half a metre away from the goal-line, but even then they didn’t manage to score!”

Eventually, after 43 unsuccessful attempts, 28-year-old midfielder and Rosenborg captain Mike Jensen managed to get on the end of a cross, somehow putting both legs together and volleying the ball home in a very original way, leaving Helland celebrating enthusiastically at the top of the tower.

Just watch your step, Pal…