Caroline Graham Hansen
Caroline Graham Hansen is a Norwegian professional footballer who plays as a winger for Spanish Liga F club FC Barcelona and the Norway women's national team.
Hansen started out her professional career playing in the Norwegian Toppserien with Stabæk. She then spent the second part of the 2013 Damallsvenskan season in Sweden, playing for Tyresö FF. Hansen represented Norway at youth international level, and made her debut for the senior team in 2011. In 2013, 18-year-old Hansen played a major role in the Norwegian team that won silver at UEFA Women's Euro 2013.
Hansen made the move to the Frauen Bundesliga in 2014 to play for VFL Wolfsburg, where she began to develop multiple serious, long-term injuries between the years of 2015 and 2018. Despite this, she reached two UEFA Women's Champions League Finals with the club in 2016 and 2018, and won 8 major trophies- 3 league titles and 5 DFB-Pokal titles. In the midst of her club success with Wolfsburg, she struggled with her national team. In 2015, she missed that year's World Cup due to injury, and in 2017, she was part of the Norway squad that had their worst-ever finish in a Euro tournament with 0 goals and 0 points.
2019 was a breakout year for Hansen, when she signed for 2019 UEFA Women's Champions League finalists FC Barcelona, and was one of the most noteworthy players of the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup with Norway. She was nominated for multiple year-end awards for the first time, including The Best and the FIFA FIFPro World XI. Her successes continued with FC Barcelona as she was integral to the 2019–20 side that won their first league title since 2015. Hansen then went on to win the UEFA Women's Champions League with the club for the first time in 2021, as well as the continental treble.
Hansen is widely regarded as one of the best wingers in the world for her performances for both club and country.
Early and personal life
Hansen was born and brought up in Oslo, Norway, in the neighborhood of Tåsen. She is the eldest child of Petter Norman Hansen and Bettina Graham Hansen; her younger brother, Fredrik, plays football for Gamle Oslo FK. Caroline Graham Hansen is often called Caro, and plays with the name Graham on her jersey. The family name Graham is British, from Caroline's great-grandfather who moved from Britain to Norway to work as a train driver.Growing up, Hansen's father travelled with her to attend different football games; she was a fan of Manchester United and FC Barcelona. Her childhood idol was former Barcelona forward Rivaldo. In 2016, she hosted a girls' training camp with Norwegian former United forward Ole Gunnar Solskjær. Outside of football, Graham Hansen was a competitive chess player between the ages of six and eight.
Their parents sent Caroline and Fredrik to a private sports school, the in Bærum. The siblings were raised by their father to be incredibly competitive between each other and to "like to make a fool out of the other"; they were never left without adult supervision, as they were prone to break out into fights. Graham Hansen has said that her coaches' response to her competitive nature helped her channel this into a desire to perform better and win. Though Graham Hansen became a professional footballer as a teenager, she got her high school diploma so that she would be able to study in the future; while playing for VfL Wolfsburg she studied medicine for a year.
Hansen has discussed her struggles with her mental health after dealing with multiple injury problems during her time at Wolfsburg. In 2019, she spoke about how she sought help from a sports psychologist. She writes poetry and enjoys attending Andrea Bocelli concerts.
Club career
Lyn (youth)
Hansen played for Lyn as a part of mixed-gender teams of both boys and girls up until the age of 14, because her coach said she was a bad influence to the boys on the team. This decision started debate within the club, and as a result, Hansen moved up to play as a starter with Lyn's G94 team, made up of boys a year older than her. Hansen says this is where she learned to play smarter and make better choices with the ball, because the boys were physically advantaged by that point. Hansen played for Lyn up to age 15, and was a part of the team that won the under-16 girls' class in the Norway Cup.Stabæk (2010–2013)
Hansen made the move to her first professional club Stabæk in August 2010, and made her Toppserien debut the same week, as a 73rd-minute substitute in the match against FK Donn. Hansen recorded an assist as Stabæk won 3–0. Graham Hansen was allowed to train with the club's boys' teams, something unprecedented; already renowned, the boys reportedly responded to her presence by saying "the women's football Messi is coming to train with us." One of the players, Endre Lübeck, recalled that they treated Graham Hansen like part of their own team. Stabæk won the league title later that year with a 3–0 home win over Trondheims-Ørn. She was a part of Stabæk's 2011 Norwegian Women's Cup winning team, who beat Røa on penalties after extra time. Hansen assisted Katrine Pedersen's equalizer during the extra time, but was the only Stabæk player to miss in the shoot out.Tyresö (2013)
In August 2013, Hansen signed for Swedish Damallsvenskan champions Tyresö FF. In the second half of the season she started five of her seven league appearances and scored three goals. She also featured in Tyresö's Round of 32 tie against Paris Saint-Germain and Round of 16 tie against Fortuna Hjørring in the 2013–14 UEFA Women's Champions League.Return to Stabæk (2014)
Hansen returned to Stabæk in January 2014 to complete her high school education, as she did not get the grades necessary to do so in Sweden. She was also concerned by the instability of the club, which would end up folding the following summer after reaching the 2014 UEFA Women's Champions League Final. She continued to be monitored by several leading European clubs and intended to move away again after finishing school in June 2014. Understanding that female footballers do not earn enough money to retire on, Hansen was planning for her career after football. Upon returning to Stabæk she arranged to play Toppserien matches for the women's team while training with the senior and youth male teams.Wolfsburg (2014–2019)
On 8 May 2014, German club VfL Wolfsburg announced they had signed a two-year contract with Hansen. Norwegian media stated her annual salary as around £100,000. Near the end of her first season at Wolfsburg, Hansen was diagnosed with jumper's knee. This injury ended up destroying most of the tendon in her knee, leading to years worth of injury troubles. The injury kept her out of the remainder of Wolfsburg's 2014–15 Champions League competition and the 2015 Algarve Cup with Norway, as well as that year's Women's World Cup with her country. Hansen sustained another injury, a kneecap fracture, near the end of the 2015–16 season. The following month, Wolfsburg reached the 2016 UEFA Women's Champions League Final, where Hansen sat out with the injury as her club was defeated 4–3 on penalties to Lyon after a 1–1 draw in regular time.In November 2016, Hansen suffered a fracture in her leg in a league match against 1. FFC Frankfurt that removed her from play for two months. After recovering from her leg fracture, Hansen returned to play in the 2016–17 UEFA Women's Champions League where Wolfsburg faced Lyon in the quarterfinal. In the second leg, Hansen scored a penalty in the 82nd minute, but it ended up being nothing more than a consolation goal as the eventual champions won 2–1 on aggregate. Later that season, she won the domestic double with Wolfsburg for the first time, earning her first league title with the club as well as defeating SC Sand 2–1 in the 2017 DFB-Pokal final.
In February 2018, Hansen extended her contract at Wolfsburg for one more year to 2019. She won the league for the second time with Wolfsburg that season. A few days after her Wolfsburg's league win was made official, Hansen faced the first penalty shootout of her career in the 2018 DFB-Pokal final. She scored the decisive penalty against Bayern Munich, securing her second domestic double with the club. In the final, however, she picked up an injury but played the full 120 minutes of the match. Less than a week later, she started the 2018 UEFA Women's Champions League Final, but went down in pain after a quarter of an hour. Hansen was taken off injured at halftime and replaced by Tessa Wullaert, and the final went to extra time where Wolfsburg lost to Lyon after Lyon scored 4 goals within twenty minutes.
In Hansen's final season at Wolfsburg, she decided to not renew her contract, which expired that year. That season, she won the DFB-Pokal with Wolfsburg for the fifth time, where she started and played all 90 minutes in the final against SC Freiburg, which ended 1–0 for Wolfsburg thanks to a goal from Ewa Pajor. Wolfsburg also won the league again that year, her third such title with the club.
In her final season in Wolfsburg, she had scored 14 goals and registered 29 assists in 33 matches. By the end of her time in Germany, she had scored 51 goals in 133 appearances and won 8 major trophies.
Barcelona (2019–present)
2019–20 season
On 20 May 2019, it was announced Hansen had signed with FC Barcelona on a two-year contract, becoming the first Norwegian to sign for the blaugrana club. She mentioned being attracted to Barcelona because of their possession style of football. Her first title with the club came on 24 August 2020, winning the Copa Catalunya. Hansen made her league debut with the club on the first matchday of the season, where Barcelona defeated CD TACÓN. Hansen scored the 6th goal in a rout of Los Blancos that ended 9–1 in Barcelona's favor.On 10 February 2020, Barcelona beat Real Sociedad by 10–1 to archive the Supercopa de España title, with Hansen scoring Barcelona's fifth goal. In March 2020, Hansen joined a group of athletes in donating 10% of her Barcelona salary to people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. On 6 May 2020, the Royal Spanish Football Federation announced the premature end of the league, naming Barcelona as league champions. She finished the 2019–20 league season as the Primera Division's top assister.
Although the domestic league was concluded, the 2019–20 UEFA Women's Champions League competition still remained suspended until its resumption in August 2020, where it was played in the Basque Country in single-leg knockout stages. Hansen started the match against Barcelona's domestic rivals Atlético Madrid in the quarterfinals, where she played all 90 minutes. Barcelona were kept scoreless until they were rescued by a goal in the 80th minute from Kheira Hamraoui, who scored from a ball rebounded off a cross from Hansen. In the semifinal, she faced her former team VfL Wolfsburg, where Barcelona fell 1–0 to the Germans.