“When it’s a good day, it’s absolutely stunning, so we’ll take that,” Laura Kaminski says with a laugh about the rainy west coast of Norway. The English former promotion-winning Crystal Palace coach is referring to Bergen, the place she now calls home, whose football club, Brann, she has taken to her heart since her appointment in January.
She could easily be speaking about the job itself. After Brann failed to qualify for the Women’s Champions League owing to a 4-0 second-leg defeat by Austria Vienna, they secured a cup final success against Aalesund, handing Kaminski a first major trophy on the continent. Her team are four points clear at the top of the league with seven games remaining.
At Brann, she is following in the footsteps of her fellow Briton, Martin Ho, and also Leif Smerud, who replaced her at Palace and who she succeeded at Norway’s reigning champions. Kaminski was sacked by Palace in February 2025, midway through their first Women’s Super League campaign, and a move to Norway “wasn’t on the cards”.
“I’d never really thought about it because I’d always been involved in jobs in England, and then this opportunity came up which meant I was going to be stretched in terms of European football. Also coming to an ambitious club that wants to fight for a title, that was a massive pull.”
After taking a much-needed break post-Palace, which she says gave her “a lot of time to reflect on what happened there”, Kaminski was ready to go back into a No 1 job after becoming a head coach, rather than an assistant, for the first time at Palace in 2024.
“I’d had a great opportunity in WSL 1, I always wanted to coach in top leagues, and here we can be in a title race most seasons, so I knew I’d have the chance to compete for trophies, and what head coach doesn’t want to compete for trophies?”
Kaminski says it has been a “great learning curve” having previously worked at promotion-winning Tottenham, for the England Women youth teams and at Charlton before moving to Palace.
Domestic opportunities after Palace were forthcoming but Kaminski says: “The person has to match the project, and while things were coming up, I didn’t feel they were a match. When Palace came up, that was a match for me, it was almost perfect in terms of personnel, being able to build something; it was somewhere I could call home. And then my agent contacted me and a recruitment agency got involved because Brann were looking for a new head coach, and it happened really quickly.
“Sometimes you don’t really realise what is going on until 24 hours down the line, you’re moving to Norway. One minute you’re in London and 48 hours later you’re on a plane, but I snapped it up because for me to get to a WSL club fighting for a title was going to be difficult, I’m still on a journey in management but I’ve been coaching for years.”
More than 15, in fact. Kaminski gained her Uefa A licence in 2018. “I always dreamed of being something that I couldn’t see,” she says. “There were hardly any pro coaches when I started, let alone female coaches. I don’t know why, I just believed that would happen.
“I had that belief I was driven and ambitious enough to do it, but it was a labour of love because it was juggling multiple jobs, always on the road, not making any money, sometimes paying to do the job. It’s come on a lot and thankfully now we’re in a different place where we can leave that behind and reward people for their skills.”
With growth has come more scrutiny, more pressure and a more ruthless sport, as Kaminski found out when Palace relieved her of her duties. Despite a small peak in results under Smerud, the club were relegated and Kaminski learned more in 18 months than in the previous 18 years.
“It was a course you couldn’t buy,” she says. “It was led by Steve Parish, a great chair, great people at the club who were able to stretch me in the role. I met fantastic people; Palace will always be my home. It’s a well-run club, but those 18 months were a crash course in how to function, especially when things aren’t going well, and things are stressful. There are things I’ve reflected on, where I think I could have controlled it better, and there’s other things [that] I think were out of my hands.”
Kaminski says “flying to games has been a huge change” in Norway, where she is enjoying “fantastic scenery” and senses a country “very proud of its football”. Her obsession with the sport remains.
“I’m constantly watching games. I was addicted to football and still am. I’ll put on a Bundesliga game and see what I would do at half-time in whatever scenario they’re in. I still have that hunger and drive as when I did all those years out in the cold and the rain in London. I was fortunate enough to work in some top clubs and with some top people. By the time I got to Palace I found it easier than I first thought, or I should say smoother.
“The coaching part of being on the ground for so many years has given me so much knowledge, developing my way of playing over and over again, and who knows, that’s just the start. It will change and evolve; we’re playing some good football here. I’ve won in England, won promotion with Tottenham and Palace, and now I want to prove I can do it abroad.”
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