The fans who climbed trees to watch Man City lose in freezing Bodo - and would do it all again

Hundreds of Manchester City fans travelled to watch their team in the Aspmyra Stadion on Tuesday and hundreds more went without tickets

There were some spectacular sights in Bodo this week: the Northern Lights were so good they even had local jaws on the floor, while one Manchester City fan who arrived without a ticket for the Champions League managed to clamber up a tree outside the stadium to watch his team. It is difficult to beat natural wonders, but mankind certainly tries.

City supporters may not have seen it all but, in their fifteenth consecutive season in the Champions League, there can't be much left. Their travels have taken them from Amsterdam to Zermatt and the 2023 final in Istanbul saw them finally crowned winners of the most prestigious competition in European club football.

Some supporters felt like that was enough for them at that point, that crowning moment a fitting time to celebrate all the memories they had made travelling to watch City and use the considerable time and money they had spent on that to enjoy life in other ways. For many more though, the thrill of watching their football team all over Europe with new friends, old friends, and loved ones is too addictive to stop.

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It's why thousands still made the trip to Madrid this year even though City playing Real is effectively a permanent slot in the calendar these days, and why so many jumped at the chance to watch Pep Guardiola's side in the Arctic Circle this week. City have never played a Norwegian team competitively (albeit they were thrashed 5-1 by Bodo/Glimt at the end of a summer training camp in 1994) and so this was a rare first for a fanbase who are no longer used to them; Pep Guardiola and his players gave the home side their first ever Champions League win, but enough about that.

To get your hands on one of the 374 tickets for a seat in the Stadion Aspmyra - one of the smallest allocations for City in years - supporters needed to have at least 27,500 points. Fewer than a thousand fans have this many, but enough of them wanted a ticket that the trip sold out before it could be offered to others and many more travelled despite there being no direct flights and some hotel accommodation costing as much per night as some of City's cheapest season tickets.

"This was one of those where you've got minutes where the draw comes out and realise there's 400 tickets," Dale Thomas, from Ancoats, told the Manchester Evening News. "We qualified in the last window that you could get them. Me and my mate Paul Jackson grew up together from our dads going to Maine Road so it's good to carry it on.

"I went to Belgrade and Bratislava which were different. The new Champions League format gets you to places like this, I'd never even heard of Bodo until they started getting in Europe a few years ago.

"You've got to go fastest finger to get the flights at a reasonable price but it was exciting. I know we got beat but it is what it is and that's part of football. Just to see the place was pretty cool. I've got pictures on my phone with snow and ice on the pavement and we were walking down the middle of the road where we were staying. You wouldn't be walking down Oldham Road to get to where you're living!

"We were knackered and it was freezing so we walked round the harbour seeing the Northern Lights. People pay loads of money to see them and you're just looking up and you get to see them - like when we were walking to the airport this morning and could see it again."

Bodo is a curious place, with a smaller population than the Etihad Stadium and a beauty to its way of life and surroundings that has somehow not caught the imagination of Norwegian tourists. Named as the European capital of culture in 2024, the image of the place is starting to shift away from being predominantly a home for conferences and events and more direct flights are planned to quicken this change.

Its football team, Bodo/Glimt embody the outsider identity of the people of northern Norway who are used to pushing through when times are hard. It took £25,000 from a local to keep the club afloat in 2012 when Sergio Aguero was winning City their first Premier League title, and they were a second division side when Guardiola arrived at the Etihad.

Even since they started winning league titles - four in a row between 2020 and 2024 - the fairytale image of the club projected to Europe has drawn grumbles in Norway from clubs who fear the prize money from the Europa League and Champions League will skew a domestic league that was finely balanced. To give an idea of the operation that Bodo/Glimt still is though, responsibility for photocopying the teamsheet that would be printed for media and officials in the hour before kick-off fell to manager Kjetil Knutsen in the time when he was expected to be finalising preparations to try to stop Erling Haaland.

That just added to the charm of the trip for City fans, with hundreds opting to travel even without a ticket. Trying to get into the match became part of the fun of the break, with Blues trying to rent the apartments built into the stadium for the night or - as one fan managed - even climbing up a tree overlooking the pitch in the ice and snow to see the action.

City's collapse gave many Bodo/Glimt fans the best night of their lives with their first ever Champions League win propelling them further into Norwegian history with the result challenging Rosenborg's win over Real Madrid as the best ever produced in the country. The result was celebrated deliriously by the 7,000 fans in the Aspmyra Stadion and many more in the town's bars, who mixed with the City fans who either came without a ticket or left the ground well before the end in dismay at the performance of their team.

"Work commitments don't allow us to do European away every single time but we try and do one away a year minimum," said Alex Edwards, a season-ticket holder of 25 years who travelled with his dad. "It's the first one we've done without a ticket but we thought when are we going to get the chance to do it. Let's do this one because its in the middle of the Arctic Circle and we thought they ground was tiny but we wouldn't be the only ones without tickets.

"I've never been to Madrid but that was just one that could happen quite a lot. You'd expect Real to be at the latter stages and chances are we're going to draw them at some point in most Champions Leagues whereas Bodo/Glimt may not qualify every year, they're not going to qualify for the latter stages every year so you're only going to get them once in a blue moon maybe.

"We watched it in the sports bar. There were loads of City fans in there, hundreds altogether and probably at least half of them were City fans. We had a really good laugh and you're in the warm as well so you haven't got the issue of being freezing while you're getting battered.

"The Bodo fans were absolutely brilliant, having banter with us and it was all completely good-natured. You would never get anything in England. It was a fantastic place to go, totally mind-blowing some of the stuff you saw. Sub zero temperatures but the houses were spectacular, there were mountains, Northern Lights. What an unbelievable place to go and worth every hour spent getting there. Even without a ticket, I'd do it all again tomorrow."

A grim turnaround awaited many Blues, with a 6.30am flight after the game one of the only options for getting back to Manchester on Wednesday. Some chose alcohol or one last chance to see the Northern Lights over sleep before wearily trudging back hoping the tiredness would blot out all memories of the game.

For the 404 supporters who got a ticket though, and the couple of extra hundred who travelled anyway without one, it was another destination and stadium ticked off a list that is still thrilling. Some fans stayed longer to experience a swim in the Norwegian Sea, a trip to the world's biggest maelstrom, or to spend time in the capital Oslo en route home.

The team can make for painful watching when they play like they did in Norway, but still offers up opportunities for the sort of amazing experiences that generations of Blues never thought would come their way and are determined to make the most of while it lasts.