Brede Hangeland

Personal information
Full name	Brede Paulsen Hangeland
Height	1.94 m (6 ft 4+1⁄2 in)
Position(s)	Centre back
Team information
Current team	Fulham
Number	5
Youth career
1998–2000	Vidar
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
2000–2005	Viking	114	(6)
2006–2008	Copenhagen	63	(3)
2008–	Fulham	91	(3)
International career‡
2001–2003	Norway U21	12	(0)
2002–	Norway	65	(1)
*Club domestic league appearances and goals, correct as of 16:46, 11 September 2010 (UTC) ‡ National team caps and goals, correct as of 3 September 2010

Brede Paulsen Hangeland (born 20 June 1981) is a Norwegian footballer, currently playing for Fulham and the Norwegian national team, of which he is the captain. The son of a Norwegian oil company worker, Hangeland was born in Houston, Texas during his parents' two-year spell in the United States, but grew up in Stavanger ^[1]. He plays as a central defender. The tall Norwegian with his characteristic calm nature is known for combining great aerial ability and physical strength with elegant technique, passing ability and pace. He has a strong passion for music, sharing a passion for Stereophonics and visits live concerts as much as he can.^{[citation needed]}

Hangeland arrived at Viking from local club FK Vidar at the start of the 2001 season. He helped win the Norwegian cup in his debut season, playing as a central defensive midfielder in the 3–0 victory over rivals Bryne FK in the final. He made his national team debut as a defensive midfielder in a 1–0 win against Austria in 2002, and has so far played more than 50 matches for Norway, mostly as a central defender. In 2005, he was made captain of Viking. When he left Viking he had played a total of 187 games for the club.

On 16 January 2006 he signed a contract with the Danish club F.C. Copenhagen. The tall defender made an impact right from the start together with Danish captain Michael Gravgaard and the two defenders were feared. Because of their height and dominance when it came to headers, they were known as the Copenhagen Air Force.^[2] With several great performances in the 2006–07 UEFA Champions League group stage Brede Hangeland was linked with numerous big clubs around Europe. During his time at Copenhagen, Hangeland won the Danish Superliga twice and the Royal League once. He played in 63 league games, scoring 3 times and total played over 100 games in the different tournaments.

During the summer of 2007 newspapers linked him with Premier League clubs Newcastle United, Liverpool, Aston Villa and Manchester City.^[3] Hangeland refuted the rumours and said he was glad to play for Copenhagen,^{[citation needed]} but finally on 18 January 2008 after days of speculation, it was officially confirmed that he had signed for Fulham, where he was reunited with his former manager from Viking, Roy Hodgson.

On 29 January 2008 he made his Fulham debut when Fulham played Bolton Wanderers at Reebok Stadium. He was voted Man of the Match by Sky Sports after the game. Following a series of good performances he quickly became a fan's favorite at Craven Cottage. The club survived relegation in the 2007–08 season with Brede forming a formidable partnership with Aaron Hughes at the heart of Fulham's defence, a partnership that has continued to blossom during the 08/09 season with Fulham's average goals conceded per game at less than one.

On 12 August 2008 Hangeland was appointed captain of the Norwegian national football team, and on 23 August he scored his first goal for Fulham against Arsenal, with Fulham winning the game 1–0.

During the summer of 2009, media reports linked him to Arsenal, but Hangeland indicated that he was happy to remain at Fulham^{[citation needed]}. On 22 October he scored his second goal for Fulham, in the Europe League match against AS Roma.^[4]

On 27 November 2009, due to his performances for Fulham Brede Hangeland was rewarded with a new deal with Fulham and put pen to paper on a contract that will see the Norwegian captain at Craven Cottage until the summer of 2013.

His style of playing doesn't differ so much from any center back in the EPL, but he is quite a tactician as well. He employs tactic like 'anticipate, intercept, recover the ball and passes it to team's playmaker'. On some perspective, he is said to resemble that of Sol Campbell in term of footballing style. Hangeland is known to be great in aerial battle, where on his goal early in the 2010/11 EPL season against Manchester United his head was actually reaching up to 2.5 meters before he succeeded in heading the ball into the net. Despite his obvious lack of agility, he has good paces with his speed and acceleration combined. On many occasions he was seen switching his position as a center back to a sweeper and even temporarily switching to a left back when Konchesky was already upfront, and he looked very comfortable with it. When asked why he took those roles abandoning his center back position, he said that it is a common practice in Danish League and Dutch's Eredivisie. His favourite position is left side center back. He stated in late in September 2010 that he has never played alongside a goalkeeper as good as Mark Schwarzer and he is so glad to have him in the team. This has proven to be true as every time Hangeland let through an opponent's striker, Mark Schwarzer is always the first one to recover the ball from the opponent's offensive line. His weakness has always been in shutting down side offenses. Other than that, he is always calm and collected and rarely resorts to hard-tackling an opponent.

After playing 12 matches on the under-21 national team, he made his debut for the senior national team on 20 November 2002 against Austria. His first goal came in his 62nd match; a UEFA Euro 2012 qualifying match against Iceland.^[5]

#	Date	Venue	Opponent	Score	Result	Competition
1	3 September 2010	Laugardalsvöllur, Reykjavík	Iceland	1 – 2	Win	Euro Qualifier

Template:Football player statistics 1 Template:Football player statistics 2 |- |2001||rowspan="5"|Viking||rowspan="5"|Premier League||22||0||7||0||0||0||4||0||33||0 |- |2002||26||2||7||0||0||0||4||0||41||2 |- |2003||26||1||6||0||0||0||0||0||32||1 |- |2004||14||3||0||0||0||0||0||0||14||3 |- |2005||26||0||3||0||0||0||10||0||39||0 Template:Football player statistics 2 |- |2005–06||rowspan="3"|Copenhagen||rowspan="3"|Danish Superliga||13||1||1||0||0||0||0||0||14||1 |- |2006–07||32||0||6||1||0||0||10||1||48||2 |- |2007–08||18||2||2||0||0||0||9||0||29||2 Template:Football player statistics 2 |- |2007–08||rowspan="3"|Fulham||rowspan="3"|Premier League||15||0||0||0||0||0||0||0||15||0 |- |2008–09||37||1||5||0||1||0||0||0||43||1 |- |2009–10||32||1||4||0||0||0||16||2||52||3 |-

Template:Football player statistics 3114||6||23||0||0||0||18||0||155||6 Template:Football player statistics 463||3||9||1||0||0||19||1||91||5 Template:Football player statistics 484||2||9||0||1||0||16||2||110||4 Template:Football player statistics 5261||11||41||1||1||0||53||3||356||15 Template:Football player statistics end

Statistics correct as of 13 May 2010

• Norwegian Cup winner: 2001 (with Viking FK)
• Danish Superliga winner: 2005–06 & 2006–07 (with Copenhagen)
• Royal League winner: 2005–06 (with Copenhagen)
• Europa League runner-up: 2009–10 (with Fulham)

• Fulham profile
• Brede Hangeland at Soccerbase