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to sign the Skeid player.
    Every time Stanley got the ball it was as if the whole world stopped. For a brief moment, Benedikte was able to sympathise with the Oppsal defender who had his eyes nervously fixed on Stanley’s red Nike boots. Then Stanley shimmied to the right. A hundred small pieces of black rubber were sent flying up from the artificial turf. The defender had sunk down on both heels, glued to the playing surface, his hands out to the sides, palms facing forward, his mouth wide open. He was like a cartoon character who had run straight into a pane of glass, trying to get his body to do as it was told, to follow the red shoes, but it was too late.
    Benedikte looked over towards the chain-link fence next to the corner flag. Per Diesen had arrived. Diesen was wearing a plain, white V-neck T-shirt and blue tartan shorts partially held up by a gold-coloured belt. His hair was bleached white and stood on end here and there in a kind of organised chaos. A pair of scintillating blue eyes were hidden behind his black sunglasses. He bent one knee and leant againstthe fence, resting most of his weight on his elbows.
    Stanley was unknown to most football fans but Per Diesen was a superstar. Diesen was 22, a playmaker with Oslo club Vålerenga and on the Norwegian national squad. For several months now he’d been linked to a number of major European clubs. But he’d started at Skeid. Like many other top Norwegian players, he played at youth level here in Oslo’s East End talent factory.
    His transfer to the team’s big brother Vålerenga had been controversial. There was a media storm, like so many times before when a major talent had been ‘stolen’ from a smaller club. Skeid claimed it was swindled out of both his transfer fee and a percentage of any possible future transfers but, luckily for Diesen, all their anger was directed at his agent, Arild Golden. Here, on his home ground, everyone seemed genuinely pleased to see him.
    Per Diesen’s talent was unquestioned. His looks led to a host of sponsorship deals and he was usually chosen as the players’ media spokesman, not to mention securing various modelling contracts. Arild Golden had promoted Diesen as a Norwegian David Beckham, his potential earnings much higher than his basic player’s income of 2.5 million kroner.
    Diesen was the first Norwegian football player from the top league, Tippeligaen, to live-tweet from the changing rooms at half-time. Arild Golden launched an online reality show, in co-operation with the tabloid paper VG , based on Diesen’s life. The title was Per Diesen TV , or PDTV for short.
    The series went through a tough start. Like most famous footballers who made money out of their appearance, Diesen was rumoured to be gay, which turned off large segments of the football audience. At away matches in Bergen or Lillestrøm he was bombarded by chants about how much he liked ‘back passes’ and ‘banana shots’.
    ‘Peeeeep!’
    The referee, in his luminous yellow strip, had to blow his whistle especially hard since he had no desire whatsoever to move outside the centre circle. When he awarded a free kick, the whole neighbourhood knew about it. Benedikte looked over at Diesen again, who ran his left hand through his hair.
    PDTV was intended to be a kind of football-meets- Entourage concept, with a handsome, young player working his way through Oslo’s most attractive women. The only problem was that Diesen didn’t have anyof these female liaisons. If a single footballer went for more than a few weeks without pulling a girl, he had to be gay. Surely a man in his position had plenty of opportunities? But he hadn’t been linked to any minor Pop Idol contestants or even to an extra from that interminable soap opera Hotel Cæsar .
    Everything changed, though, when Golden introduced Diesen to the glamour model Sabrina. They fell in love and moved in together. The homophobic chants died down, and his playing became even better. Diesen was