“I was always very fond of the ball and I was definitely a No 10,” Lise Klaveness says as she describes the kind of football she played while winning 73 caps for Norway. “I had played as a No 6 but I didn’t like it. I wanted to play with risk. So the coaches ended up playing me as an offensive midfielder because I had a high appetite for risk.”
The 41-year-old Klaveness is also a lawyer and a judge who, as the president of Norway’s FA, made a blistering speech at Fifa’s congress in Doha last March when she demanded that football leaders support migrant workers in Qatar, protect LGBTQ+ fans at the World Cup and make the game open to all. As a gay woman, happily married to former Norway international Ingrid Fosse Sæthre, Klaveness could have been jailed under Qatari law but, as she points out, she was at little risk personally.
Klaveness is now trying to win a seat on the Uefa executive committee at a time when, as the recent independent report into last year’s near-catastrophic Champions League final showed, the European governing body is in crisis and lacking moral leadership. But she has taken the riskier option by deciding not to contest the quota seat for women. Instead, in the April election, Klaveness will stand against male administrators in a bid to win one of seven open places.
Florence Hardouin, of France, occupies the quota position but Klaveness says: “I would find it demotivating to block another woman. I got a lot of advice that I should go for the female seat, that it’s a lower threshold [and easier to win], but it is crucial for me to walk the walk.”
Klaveness accepts that her chances of a successful election have been drastically reduced by her ethical decision. “It’s very difficult but I will still try. People tell me it’s too difficult, and that I am impatient, but to me it’s a responsibility because I can help a lot of countries with development of girls’ and women’s football and the building of stronger grassroots clubs.”
Her considerable experience includes being world football’s only female technical director in charge of both national men’s and women’s teams. As Norway’s technical director from 2018 to 2022, Klaveness worked with Erling Haaland, Martin Ødegaard and Ada Hegerberg – three of Europe’s leading footballers. “I come from the technical side. Even when I was asked to be a TV pundit on the women’s side I said immediately: ‘I also have to work with men’s football.’ So I did the Premier League, the men’s World Cup and women’s football.
“To me it’s always been very important that the men’s and women’s games are not working against each other. And when I had the privilege to lead the men’s and women’s national teams I got great operational experience. This is one of the big reasons why I run for exco. The game for men and women is very split and it’s useful to have, as you say in English, a foot in both camps.”
Klaveness is also strong in advocating the sustainability of grassroots football and helping those on the margins of a moneyed game. “When you’re so big,” she says of Europe’s elite powerbrokers, “you have power to exclude as well. So we need leaders who want to make football inclusive for all. We will lose all moral authority if we don’t do this in these very geopolitical, distressing times.”
Her intelligence, proficiency and moral conscience are obvious. And so it is disappointing when Klaveness is reluctant to discuss last week’s devastating report into the chaos of the 2022 Champions League final which put thousands of lives at risk at the Stade de France. I have to pressure her to comment on a report which Uefa itself commissioned. Of course it is politically expedient not to heap further condemnation on the governing body in the midst of her election campaign, but Klaveness agrees in a second interview that we need to address the findings which concluded that Uefa bears “primary responsibility” for the glaring organisational and safety failings that so nearly caused disaster.
Klaveness was outside the stadium that night. “It was almost like we were in this trap,” she remembers. “We had to carry older people over a fence. It was traumatic and we saw the space where supporters were pressed in that area. It was a bit out of control and everyone was relieved that lives were not lost. So I was not surprised that Uefa and the host made errors. You saw it with your own eyes. But from the conversations I’ve had with [Uefa] it seems like they are acknowledging those mistakes and trying to analyse what happened.”
What does Klaveness make of the report’s damning central allegation that Uefa has “marginalised” its own safety and security unit, which has been headed since 2021 by Zeljko Pavlica, a close friend of the organisation’s president, Aleksander Ceferin? The report found that the unit played no effective part in the planning or operation of the final.
“The whole report is of course disturbing,” she says. “But I’m not in a position to pass judgment on that personally. It’s very important that Uefa analyse the report and answer these points. I will wait for that.”
When we spoke for the first time, before reading the report, I asked Klaveness if Ceferin’s choice of Pavlica suggested that Uefa was rife with cronyism. She switched to a different subject. “The way I look at it is that Ceferin was very strong in the Super League discussion. It was crucial for the smaller countries and for the whole model of European football.”
Surely plans for a Super League were crushed by fans across Europe rather than by Ceferin? “It was definitely a grassroots riot which shows you that all power is not where the money is,” Klaveness concedes. “But Uefa and Ceferin acted very decisively.”
Yet an absence of any leadership challenge to Ceferin in the April elections is scandalous – especially when he is ultimately responsible for Uefa and its showpiece event of the Champions League final. The report describes the way in which Uefa’s leaders tried to avoid accountability as “reprehensible”.
“One of the most important things in the report was how [Liverpool] supporters were [wrongly] blamed,” Klaveness agrees. “That was horrible and the first mistake was to blame supporters. Uefa apologised to supporters and that’s good.”
Pressed on the need to acknowledge Ceferin’s accountability, Klaveness is careful: “I’m not saying nobody should be held accountable but I come from the position of being a lawyer and a judge. There is media interest that we throw out names now because in the end people will be accountable. But it’s very important you have due diligence and we talk about how we change the system. That’s why I am very interested in the report’s recommendations.”
So far the governing body has released a laughably evasive statement: “Uefa is currently analysing the findings of the review and assessing them against its own analysis of the organisation of the event and facts that occurred around it.”
Klaveness stresses that: “I will await Uefa’s [full] response to this report which is not a courtroom decision. It’s not a verdict – even though the report is very thorough. We now await Uefa’s response which should be very clear.”
For a worrying moment it sounds as if Klaveness is suggesting that Uefa’s response will offer the definitive verdict. “No, no,” she insists, “but they have to answer it now because there are 21 recommendations in the report. It’s very important they take the responsibility and believe those 21 recommendations after this horrific incident.”
Even if electioneering curbs her usual ability to speak freely, especially in a campaign stacked against her, Klaveness can help cleanse Uefa of some of the ills that infect the organisation. “My aim is not to be confronting and escalating conflict but to be bridge-building,” she says. “I was a judge and I worked in mediation, with people who committed severe crimes. I found a way to talk to them through football – which has the biggest force to be anti-discrimination and to include everyone. So for me to go in and point fingers would be ridiculous. I’m very aware of the challenges in football. They are very big and it’s not going to be easier moving ahead.
“I am running for this election with nothing to lose because football is a big passion in my life. It’s a bit personal so it’s worth trying. If I don’t make it, someone else can take the next run. Or I will try again.”
