“The hair, the colouring — maybe it reminds people. It’s become part of me and I feel comfortable about it,” he says with a smile. The nickname has yet to follow him to England, but in his home country they say it is not just his looks but his wide midfield play and his dead-ball delivery that are reminiscent of Beckham. They fete him in Norway. “They do these statistics that show how much Norwegian newspapers write about someone, and I was third last year. I beat the king!” Pedersen says. “I’m happy people are interested in me. I like the media and I’d like to work in it one day, maybe on TV. The Beckham thing is just fun. It doesn’t mean anything, although if I could have the same career as Beckham, I’d be happy.”
It is six months since he left Tromso for Blackburn, but it is only recently that the 23-year-old has won the opportunity to show English people what all the fuss is about. He struck an impressive goal against Norwich last Saturday and caused his opponents no end of discomfort at corners and free kicks, and goes into today’s FA Cup derby at Burnley having scored twice against Cardiff over two games in the previous round.
Until he appeared in the first of those matches, on January 8, however, Pedersen had been in limbo, not having played since September 22, when he was dropped by Mark Hughes after just four appearances for his new club. Hughes did not feel he was tough enough for English football. Pedersen, boyish, and naturally lean, was sent to the gym to harden up.
The shock might have broken somebody with less of a talent for taking things in his stride. “It’s more physical in England, and, most of all, it’s a high tempo. The football’s quicker and it takes time to get used to that. It (being dropped) was a big difference for me because before I arrived I’d been playing all the games for my club and been in the national team. But I learnt from it.
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He praises Hughes’s man-management. “He knows how it is to be a player. He’s been there, and he knows that sometimes you don’t need to be shouted at, that you might need to hear something positive when you’re down.” But it was not, perhaps, until the transfer window opened and Blackburn turned down an offer for him from Marseille, that Pedersen knew he was wanted. He had been Graeme Souness’s last signing. “It was funny,” he says. “I signed on the Thursday. I had 30 minutes’ training on the Friday. I was late because I had to do a press conference, so I just played five-a-side, took six free kicks and a corner. The next day we had a lunchtime kick-off and I was in the team.”
The game was against Manchester United. Local journalists were puzzled when among them in the press seats were a handful of Norwegian reporters and a TV crew. Pedersen performed competently on Blackburn’s left flank and his side drew. Souness left for Newcastle, however, and Pedersen’s next three appearances were poor, so he was jettisoned. It was a bewildering time. “First I was away with the national team, then I came back and played at Rosenborg and then went with Tromso on a trip to the Arctic arranged by one of our sponsors. We were almost at the North Pole when the call came (from Blackburn) so then I had to go back to Tromso, then Oslo, then fly to Manchester and drive here. After the Man U match I went away with the national team again (to Italy) and Souness resigned. He’d been my manager for one game and one training session. I got a phone call, ‘Hey, you’ve got a new manager’. I said, ‘Okay, who did we get?’ ‘Tony Parkes’. ‘Who’s Tony Parkes?’ ‘The old guy’. ‘Ah, I think I saw him at training’.”
Parkes was caretaker for one game, and then came Hughes. “When I was out of the team people were calling me from Norway and saying, ‘What’s happening?’ and I went to Mark Hughes and said, ‘What do you think of me?’ He told me to be patient and work hard, so that’s what I did.”
In hindsight, Pedersen believes it was good for him to get a rest. He had been playing almost constantly for two years. The Norwegian season runs from February until the end of October, and he played for Tromso through the 2003 campaign, spent two months with the national side, gone straight back to pre-season, then played throughout the 2004 season before moving to England last August.
Blackburn got him for £1.5m on the second attempt, having first bid last May. Tromso turned them down at that time because Manchester United, Sunderland, Aston Villa, Manchester City and Everton were having Pedersen watched. As a teenager he had a trial with Middlesbrough, but decided to continue developing at Tromso. “I was young and it was very exciting. I was training with Paul Ince, (Alen) Boksic, (Gareth) Southgate, great players — and Steve McClaren was really likeable. But he’d just bought four players and I wasn’t sure I’d get my chance.”
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Ernst, his father, a former defender with Viking Stavanger, oversaw his early development. It was Dad who suggested he try to become two-footed.
Naturally right-footed, the youngster practised using his left and found his niche on the left flank. He grew up in Vadso, a town of 5,000 people on Norway’s northern coastline, a 25-mile boat ride from Russia. It is 250 miles inside the Arctic Circle, north of Lapland, and the temperature is below freezing for an average 198 days every year.
“In the winter, when it’s dark, we played football indoors, but when I played for Vadso’s first team we played on ice, with ice studs on. What you wear is like a normal football shoe, but with metal pegs on the bottom. They’d use a tractor to clear the snow, but the ground would be like this,” says Pedersen touching the smooth, rock-hard surface of the table. “The ball would fly off it, but we had fun.
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A multi-sportsman, he also did gymnastics, competed at mountain running and orienteering, played ice hockey and was in the national handball squad at junior level. But he always wore a football strip in his dreams. Sigurd Rushfeldt, who made his name at Rosenborg and was once on loan at Birmingham City, was a hero. “He also came from Vadso and showed it was possible to make it in football and get to England even if you come from a small place.”
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I had expected Pedersen to be ignorant of the enmity between Blackburn and Burnley. “Actually, my teacher back in high school was a Burnley fan,” he says, laughing. “He was my football trainer also, and I was friends with his son. I haven’t spoken to him since the draw, but I’m thinking about it. Maybe I’ll call him and say, ‘What do you think?’ For the last week everybody’s been talking about the rivalry. It’s a big game, but it would be a big game even if it wasn’t Burnley, because this is the FA Cup.”
He feels Blackburn, sparked by new signings Robbie Savage, Ryan Nelsen and Aaron Mokoena, are starting to motor and was happy to scotch the claims of Nigel Worthington, the Norwich manager, that Blackburn are bullies with a silken display. “Players with skills like Tugay and David Thompson are the opposite of bullies. It was nice to show Norwich we could play.”
Life is altogether better since he moved into a flat in Manchester, having spent his first two months in a hotel. “You get tired of living from a suitcase. In the hotel it’s the same four walls, the same bed, nothing is yours. You can’t just walk in your underpants downstairs to eat breakfast. Into the restaurant, ‘Hello everyone!’ People would be, ‘What the **** is going on? Get him to the hospital’.”
Pedersen is really laughing now. “At home, you’ve got your own couch,” he continues. “You can get a drink from the fridge, cook some food, watch telly, sing, play your music. I felt better as soon as I moved. My first weeks here were an experience I had to survive. Not playing, living in a hotel — I had to work hard to get energy.” He is the darling of the 130-strong Blackburn Rovers Supporters Club Norway, whose president lives in Manchester and which celebrates Rovers’ history of Norwegian players. Henning Berg, Egil Ostenstad, Stig Inge Bjornebye, Lars Bohinen, Martin Andersen and Per and Tore Pedersen have all worn the club’s colours, but here is a kinsman who is bigger news.
Meet the smiling, boyish, skilful, fragile Norwegian David Beckham.