Madeleine Giske

In 2003 as a 15-year-old Madeleine Giske joined the Bergen club IL Sandviken where she debuted in Division-1 on 26 April. She was an immediate success and continued with the same club when it was promoted into the Toppserien in 2004, scoring eleven goals in that season and also in the next. In 2006, she moved to Arna-Bjørnar, also in Bergen, where she debuted with Erika Skarbø and Elise Thorsnes. She has contributed to making Arna-Bjørnar one of the top clubs in Norway and it finished fifth in the league table for 2009. Having progressed through Norway's national youth teams, Giske made her senior national team debut on 25 March 2006 in a match against Greece, and scored her first international goal, also in a match against Greece, on 20 June 2006. In most of her first 11 matches for the national team she started on the bench, but she played as a back, an attacking midfielder and as a winger. She went with the team to the 2007 FIFA Women's World Cup in China in 2007 and played as a substitute in Norway's match against Ghana which they won 7–2. The team reached the semifinals of the World Cup where they lost to Germany and eventually finished in 4th place behind Germany, Brazil and USA. In June 2008, Giske heard of her selection as a reserve for the Norway national side to travel to China for the 2008 Summer Olympics only minutes after she had an anterior cruciate ligament rupture diagnosed, suffered in a club match against Team Strømmen two days earlier on 7 June. The…