Patrick Anderson: “These moments will stay with me for the rest of my life”

But the M20 EHF EURO is now water under the bridge and, this month, he is part of the EHF EURO 2026 with the senior team. And when he looks back to where he came from, the word Anderson uses to describe his journey is “crazy”.

“I am now playing with players I looked up to, that I was a fan of in front of my TV not so long ago. You always want to play with the best players, and that is what is happening at the moment,” he says.

Patrick Anderson has always been on the radar in Norway. In fact, national coach Jonas Wille actually played with Anderson’s dad, and it is only naturally that he turned to the national coach to seek advice as to how to best guide his son.

“I have known Patrick since he was 15 or 16 years old, and he has always been really talented. But not only has he got talent, he is also smart and mature, which is not always the case at this age,” adds the national team coach.

After playing for Elverum Håndball, Anderson moved to Denmark and Aalborg Håndbold last summer in order to keep progressing.

“I was really happy in Elverum, but I felt like I needed to take another step up. Of course, it is hard because I don’t play with Aalborg as much as I did in Elverum, but the professionalism of the club is exactly what I need to keep moving forward,” says the 21-year-old.

Playing in the Machineseeker EHF Champions League is no guarantee to play for your national team, however, so when Anderson was named to Norway’s roster for the EHF EURO, it raised a few eyebrows. But injuries to Magnus Rød and Harald Reinkind put the young left-hander in the spotlight, maybe a little bit earlier than expected.

“Maybe he would not play as much as he does now, but his qualities are so obvious that he would have been in the national team at some point anyway,” says Jonas Wille, before describing his player.

“He is actually very good at hiding his qualities. He is not particularly tall, neither big, but he is really good at finding solutions. Even defensively, he has been able to stop players with a lot of experience.”

Since the beginning of the EHF EURO, Anderson has scored 15 goals, including seven in the opening match against Ukraine. Even though he was less present in the game against France, he bounced back and scored another four goals against Spain in the first main round game.

“We are still alive, and that’s the most important. It was a tough game, but every game in this main round will be a do-or-die one for us anyway,” Anderson said, at the end of the game.

Either way, Patrick Anderson is already making memories and gathering experience that will be useful for him in the near future, both on and off the court.

“I am grateful for the whole experience,” he says, before the third preliminary round game against France, played in Oslo. “Of course, it took me some time to adapt, but I feel great now.”

The adaptation might done on the court, as his performances prove it, but there are some things that Anderson is not used to just yet.

“After a while, you understand that the players you looked up to are just normal persons,” he adds, before concluding: “But yesterday night, we had 9,000 persons singing the national anthem with us, and that was a lot of emotions. Especially in front of my parents, my close friends and my girlfriend. I will never get used to this, I think. These moments will remain with me for the rest of my life.”

Photos © kolektiff images