How the sleepy Norwegian fishing town shape career of Solskjaer

You really have to feel a pang of sympathy for the other footballing sons of the Norwegian town of Kristiansund.

Oyvind Leonhardsen carved out a very good career in the English Premier League with Wimbledon, Liverpool, Tottenham and Aston Villa. Anders Giske, also a midfielder, played in Germany for Nuremberg, Bayer Leverkusen and Cologne.

But neither of them can really compete in the adoration stakes with the picturesque fishing port's most famous former resident - Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

High above this charming town of 24,000 inhabitants, on a hillside of pine trees, is a Hollywood-style sign that spells out 'KRISTIANSUND'.

When Solskjaer was appointed caretaker manager of Manchester United last December, they replaced the letters to spell '20 LEGEND' in reference to the banner at Old Trafford.

It's Solskjaer that put the town on the map and excitement around the place has scarcely been higher as he brings his United team to the Norwegian capital Oslo to play his home town side Kristiansund on Tuesday night.

Down by the town's harbour, where boats of all shapes and sizes - including the odd cruise ship on a tour of the country's beautiful fjords - slip by is a statue of a fisherman's wife.

Fishing for the 'klippfisk' - a type of salted cod fish - is the main industry in Kristiansund, though it has become accustomed to catering for the off-duty oil workers of the rigs out in the Norwegian Sea.

You imagine one day the fisherman's wife might be accompanied by a statue of Solskjaer, perhaps in his knee slide pose after scoring United's winner in the 1999 Champions League final.

It was in this town - whose population is about a third of Old Trafford's capacity - that Solskjaer was born, grew up and first learned the skills that carried him to the pinnacle of European football.

To look at black and white photographs of the curly-haired kid posing in a goalmouth at his first club, Clausenengen, is to instantly recognise the man and manager who still retains his baby-faced features.

Clausenengen, the third division club Solskjaer first joined at the age of seven and debuted for aged 17 in 1990, now exist only in amateur football.

They merged with local rivals Kristiansund Fotballklubb in the autumn of 2003 to establish a new team called Kristiansund BK, the top-flight side United will play.

Solskjaer regularly returns to his hometown - though less so after leaving Norwegian club Molde, an hour's drive away from Kristiansund - and slips back instantly into the quiet local way of life.

He may be one of the most recognisable figures in world football, but the 46-year-old still humbly enquiries after old friends and stops to chat with people in the supermarket.

It says much about Solskjaer's persona that two of his three children, his youngest son and daughter, play for the local Clausenengen youth team.

His eldest son, 19-year-old Noah, is set to play for Kristiansund in the friendly on Tuesday against his dad.

It's perhaps little wonder that the match was arranged for Norway's national stadium, the Ullevaal, in the capital Oslo.

Kristiansund may be a top flight club but their ground holds just 4,444 spectators and their average crowd a fraction over 4,000.

The friendly came about, ironically, as a result of Solskjaer once again leaving Norway to answer the call of Manchester United.

After United's glorious comeback win over Paris Saint-Germain in last season's Champions League earned Solskjaer the job full-time, his club Molde had to search for a replacement.

The following morning, Kristiansund managing director Kjetial Thorsen was pondering this. His wife Kari suggested he text Solskjaer and see if this dream friendly could be arranged.

'A few weeks later we are on a Kristiansund training camp in Marbella and the phone is ringing,' Thorsen told the Manchester Evening News.

'It is Ole Gunnar who is on the line. We can play against KBK in Oslo at the end of July if you wish.'

Of course, it was always destined that the young Solskjaer was bound for much better things than the Norwegian third division all those years ago.

In one picture, he is shown holding up nine fingers to reflect the fact he scored nine goals in a youth match. In another, he scored 14.

While Solskjaer's small physique prevented him following in the footsteps of his father Oivind, six-times Greco-Roman wrestling champion of Norway, it did make him elusive in the penalty box.

Once he broke into the senior ranks at Clausenengen, he was truly prolific. Playing in the Otta Cup, he scored 17 times in six matches.

And in his final season with the club, he scored a remarkable 31 of their 47 goals, earning him a move to elite side Molde.

Indeed, in his five years playing for Clausenengen, he scored 115 goals in 109 matches.

'We were already proud when he left for Molde in 1994 and then even more so when he joined Manchester United two years later - it was tremendous,' Clausenengen chairman John Marius Dybvik told the BBC.

When Solskjaer was at school, his teachers often had to regulate the team sizes when his class played football in PE because he was so good.

Such was - and is - the popularity of English football in Norway, there was once a mini-tournament with teams named 'Liverpool', 'Tottenham' and 'Manchester United'.

You can guess which one Ole was on.

Kristiansund is the sleepy town with the Hollywood sign, which gave rise to the boy with the Hollywood story.