How City pulled off their Mathias Kvistgaarden pursuit

Eintracht Frankfurt will be playing Champions League football next season. RB Leipzig finished seventh in the Bundesliga. Lens ended the Ligue 1 campaign in eighth. Rennes were just nine points behind them.

Long-term admirers Celtic are serial domestic winners. There are more clubs, like West Ham and Lyon, that had scouted him at length. 

Yet it was Norwich, who finished in the bottom half of the Championship last season, that unveiled the highly-rated 23-year-old and won the race for his signature. 

Kvistgaarden’s arrival at Carrow Road marked the culmination of an exhaustive process that had spanned weeks and months. He is a player that City’s recruitment team have worked extensively on for some time. 2019 was the first time he entered their radar.

But so much has to align for a player of interest to become a signing. The price point, context and will of the individual all play a part in whether they end up in yellow and green. 

Sometimes, as is the case for Jakov Medic and Vladan Kovacevic, that point where those facets come together is later down the road. That felt likely in Kvistgaarden’s case given the list and level of suitors and interest he was attracting. 

So much of recruitment is about timing, and Norwich mastered that in their pursuit of Kvistgaarden. 

As recently as the middle of last week, it seemed that the attacker was destined for France. Lens had a fee agreed and were pushing to complete the deal worth £11m. 

Mark Attanasio’s backing helped Norwich City pull off the Mathias Kvistgaarden deal. (Image: Adam Harvey/Newsquest) It became clear to Norwich that the moment had to be now. With support from Mark Attanasio’s group, they pushed and sold the move to Kvistgaarden, convincing him to reject the advances of Lens and others to solely focus on a move to City. 

However, the most cunning aspect was the discovery of a time-dependent release clause worth £6.9m – nearly half of the overall package that Lens had previously struck with Brondby. It was one which was only available this summer and hadn’t been uncovered by other interested parties. It was a rabbit out of the hat that few expected. 

For finding and exploiting that, City deserve credit. It allowed them to move with haste and purpose. It helped to bypass time-consuming negotiations and permitted them a headstart to thrash out terms with Kvistgaarden and his camp. 

Knapper was effusive in his quotes to City’s ownership, led by Mark Attanasio, who can provide them with the resources to complete such deals without the necessity of selling a key player first. That hasn’t been the case in recent history. Without that ability, this pursuit would not have been possible in its nature. 

Finance and information is one aspect, but if City cannot sell Kvistgaarden the move then the whole body of work becomes redundant.

In Oscar Schwartau, Norwich had a trusted former colleague to help with the sales pitch, but the extensive presentation from Knapper, Liam Manning and Lee Dunn helped the Dane decide that Carrow Road was the best place for his development. 

Lee Dunn (centre) played an influential role in helping City sign Kvistgaarden. (Image: Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd) That involves the facilities at Colney – which are a major sell to potential recruits – but also the objectives and footballing vision now led by Manning. 

It has been a collaborative and extensive process. One that has resulted in success. The reaction of the City fanbase upon Kvistgaarden’s unveiling tells the whole story about the mood they’ve successfully cultivated through their early summer business. 

But being in possession of that information takes excellent contact building and strong relationships. Those hard yards have paid dividends in this case. 

City’s recruitment team, led by Lee Dunn, deserve immense credit for sourcing that information that propelled them to the front of the queue. It is the same type of work that helped them prize Borja Sainz from Giresunspor in 2023 via a relegation clause. 

That is the type of recruitment that City will be seeking to utilise from here on in. Even with Attanasio’s backing, they don’t have the level of financial resource and boxing clever is critical to attracting talent. This has been an example of how they approach their work. 

Kvistgaarden’s signing is a high-profile success story, but the same processes have been used to help convince Harry Darling, Kovacevic and Medic to join the club. 

Harry Darling is another example of Norwich City beating competition to sign talent. (Image: Norwich City FC) City’s recruitment team have done their bit. Now it’s down to Manning and his coaching team to develop him further and extract the best from him in a Championship setting. 

That is the great unknown. It won’t all be plain sailing, and many recruits from abroad have struggled to adapt to their new surroundings. Kvistgaarden is now on that journey, and the hope is that the excitement that has followed his City arrival is still alive after a series of Championship matches. 

It is a signing created through hard work and cunning connections. Irrespective of how it unfolds from here, City deserve credit for how they’ve achieved it.