The academy awards will go to Manchester City as the succession of emerging stars continues, but their Oscar has gone to Fulham – and it might turn out to be one of the transfer coups of the season.
He looks happy and at ease in new colours, reasoning about former team-mates Cole Palmer and Morgan Rogers and how they thrived on regular football, and excited for fresh challenges including a quest to bring European football back to Craven Cottage and a World Cup adventure with Norway.
At 22, Oscar Bobb is ready to spread his wings again. Another of City’s breakout stars has broken out.
‘I wouldn’t say I was desperate to move,’ he tells Daily Mail Sport of his £27million switch from the Etihad to the Cottage in January. ‘I had some fitness issues but then they also made some signings and there was a big squad there in the end. Both parties agreed if the right club came, it would be fair for me to move.
‘When Fulham came in and I spoke to Marco Silva, I felt like that was the right thing. It was very appealing. I spoke to the manager at City and the sporting director, and they were brilliant, they understood.’
Silva’s tactical vision was a key factor but the culture of the club, now established in the Premier League and improving, also struck a chord.
At 22, Oscar Bobb is ready to spread his wings again. Another of City’s breakout stars has broken out – at Fulham
He looks happy and at ease in new colours, reasoning about former team-mates Cole Palmer and Morgan Rogers and how they thrived on regular football, and excited for fresh challenges
Marco Silva’s tactical vision was a key factor but the culture of the club, now established in the Premier League and improving, also struck a chord
‘It’s a stable club,’ explains Bobb. ‘That was very important for me, to come to a place where I felt like I could be in a protected environment and grow as a player. It’s different for every player. Cole going to Chelsea, I remember during that saga, I was with him for it, and they saw him becoming what he’s become.
‘A lot of people from the outside maybe didn’t think it would go that quick, but when a club comes in for you and has a plan for you, if your visions align, then that’s the most important part. It’s important to be in the right place breaking out but with Cole, there was never any question of him being able to do what he’s done.’
Bobb is a year younger than Palmer and Rogers, but they all featured in City’s FA Youth Cup-winning team of 2020.
‘It’s so funny, because you get these people coming into the academies telling stories about how only one from every age group maybe gets playing time at Premier League or Championship level,’ he says. ‘From my age group, there’s eight or nine playing at that level.’
The secret? ‘Getting the best talent, maybe,’ he smiles. ‘All the players had a lot of quality but obviously weren’t always able to show that at City. I wasn’t surprised when I saw any of them breaking out into stars, but it’s very important to be in the right place with regards to breaking out.’
The journey from Oslo to London has not been free of obstacles.
Bobb left Norway at the age of 11 with his mother, an actress called Turid Gunnes. ‘She’s done a lot of different things both on screen and stage,’ he says. ‘One of my favourites is called Jul i Svingen. I don’t know how to translate it (literally it means ‘Christmas in Svingen’), but it’s like an advent calendar in Norway for kids with an episode a day through December and it airs every Christmas. It’s good.’
Gunnes struck a partnership with a theatre group and moved to Porto where she still lives and works, but FIFA ruled her relocation was an attempt to dodge rules on the movement of young players and denied Porto permission to sign Bobb.
With fellow City academy graduates James McAtee, Cole Palmer and Rico Lewis after winning the UEFA Super Cup in 2023 – only Lewis remains at the club now
‘A lot of people from the outside maybe didn’t think it would go that quick, but when a club comes in and has a plan for you, if your visions align, then that’s the most important part’
He lived in Portugal for three years and trained sometimes in the club’s academy. He also played some games for them, but when the Court of Arbitration for Sport backed FIFA and the last of their legal appeals were lost, his family decided he would return to Oslo to live with his father Abdou, an engineer now retired.
‘When I moved back at 14, it was because I couldn’t play football,’ says Bobb, who signed for Valerenga, the five-time Norwegian champions and where John Carew made his breakthrough. ‘I would probably have stayed if I could’ve played. I was a big Porto fan. I still am a Porto fan. It just wasn’t possible.
‘I understand why the rules are in place and that’s a good thing, so I fully understand it. It was annoying, of course, for me but I don’t think the rules are set up for cases like mine necessarily. My mum had a full life there. I was in an international school. I wasn’t purely there for football, so it was a bit different. But the rules are there and I get it 100 per cent.’
His next move out of Norway was to Manchester City in 2019. They had been on his case for some time. On a visit to look at City’s facilities, he bumped into Pep Guardiola.
‘I was 15, having a look around the training ground, obviously a bit starstruck,’ says Bobb. ‘I just randomly met him in the corridors.’ Truly random, he insists. Not a well-practised City ploy to woo would-be scholars.
‘I don’t think Pep has time to speak to many 15-year-olds,’ says Bobb. ‘He said I had lovely hair, and he would like some of it.’
Guardiola came to admire other facets of the young Norwegian, too, as he burst into the first team, making his debut off the bench against Fulham, of course, at the Etihad Stadium in September 2023.
International caps followed and by the end of the season, Bobb had 34 appearances for club and country. ‘He’s so dynamic, and the work ethic is unbelievable,’ gushed Guardiola. ‘He can play five positions. If he decides to stay we have a player for many, many years.’
There is genuine excitement around Bobb as high-flying Fulham also prepare for an FA Cup fifth-round tie at home against Championship Southampton
‘So dynamic, and the work ethic is unbelievable,’ Pep Guardiola once gushed about Bobb. ‘He can play five positions. If he decides to stay we have a player for many, many years’
Bobb dazzled in pre-season and the Community Shield win over Manchester United in 2024, but injury struck on the eve of the new season. Turning sharply to press in a small-sided game, one foot stuck in the turf, the other slipped. He wouldn’t play again for City until the following April.
‘I heard it break,’ he recalls. ‘Just a slip, two or three days before we played Chelsea to open the season. Broke my fibula, tore a ligament in my ankle and some cartilage. It was a nasty injury.’
Wings clipped, the timing seemed cruel, but Bobb has a different take on it. ‘Everybody says bad timing,’ he says, ‘and I see that point, but had it happened two or three years before, I probably never would have got the chance in the first team.
‘The fact I got in and then got injured is probably better. I know a lot of academy players who struggle with injuries and never got the chance, so I didn’t really look at it that way.’
Even so, the recovery process tested his patience. ‘I hadn’t been walking right, so I got a stress response in my foot,’ he says. ‘It ended up being eight months when the expectation was five and the toughest part was the last two months.
‘It did drag on a bit and then the biggest thing was my sharpness, that was so hard to get back but now I’m fully fit. I feel great.’
Tony Khan, vice-chairman and director of operations at Fulham, had Bobb’s name prominent on his wish-list for years and pounced when he realised there was a chance to complete a swift deal in January.
They do not always get the same lavish praise as Brighton and Brentford but Fulham’s recruitment since returning to the Premier League has served them well.
They do not always get the same lavish praise as Brighton and Brentford but Fulham’s recruitment since returning to the Premier League has served them well
‘I’m sure we can achieve great things,’ he says. ‘We have great depth and quality – we can definitely push for Europe’
There is genuine excitement around Bobb as he scans new horizons on the eve of an FA Cup fifth-round tie at home against Southampton, who are on a strong run themselves having not lost since mid-January.
‘I’m sure we can achieve great things,’ he says. ‘We have great depth and quality – we can definitely push for Europe. We have a difficult tie but the FA Cup can be a serious target in the years ahead.
‘I want to become an important player for the club. I want to play in every game, I’ve not had that in my career so that’s a big goal, and I want to leave my mark on games, score more goals, which I think I can do.’
