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Jan-Age Fjörtoft was a striker for Eintracht Frankfurt for three years. He told bundesliga.de about his memories of the dramatic 1999 relegation battle.

The 40 year old Norwegian played for Eintracht 52 times and scored 14 goals. Fjörtoft has been capped for Norway 71 times and is currently the commercial manager for the Lilleström SK football club, where his playing career ended in 2002. Talking about his positive memories of the relegation battle at the end of the 1998/1999 season Fjörtoft says "It was really sensational". In this interview with bundesliga.de he tells us about his years in Frankfurt and the unforgettable 5-1 win over Kaiserslautern.

bundesliga.de: Mr. Fjörtoft, you played for Frankfurt between 1998 and 2001. What memories do you have from back then?

Jan-Age Fjörtoft: The first thing that comes to mind is the 1999 relegation fight and our finishing the season with four wins and of course the best of all, the win against Kaiserslautern in the final match. But even in the following year we were quite a few points behind in the table and we also got docked points because of the club's financial problems. But in spite of everthing we did avoid relegation twice, first of all with coach Jörg Berger and in the next year under Felix Magath. I have nice memories of those years in Frankfurt.

bundesliga.de: Can you still remember your famous goal from the 5-1 win?

Fjörtoft: I knew as a child how hard it is to score goals, even if your running toward the goalkeeper alone. And then I learned how effective a step-over kick can be. I scored a similar goal for Norway against Poland in 1993 and we qualified for the World Cup as a result. That was a huge accomplishment for a smalll country like Norway. Those are a few of the moments in your life, where you know it's all about a few centimetres. And if I hadn't made it, I might have never been able to move to Germany to play football.

bundesliga.de: Was it immediately clear after the 5-1 win that it would be enough to avoid relegation?

Fjörtoft: No, I didn't know that. I'd heard that we needed another goal, but I couldn't understand why! I only noticed how quiet it was in the stadium, because you notice it when there are 60,000 fans there. Then I looked over at Jörg Berger and saw how calm he was. It was a very important moment. And when he cheered, then I knew we'd made it, but how or why still wasn't clear to me. It was only later that we found out we had the same goal difference as Nuremberg, but because we'd scored more goals we stayed in the top flight.

bundesliga.de: You're the commercial manager of Lilleström SK footbal club in Norway. Uwe Rösler was coach there until recently. Did you use your old contacts to get him to take the coaching job?

Fjörtoft: No, it was different. Uwe came to us two and a half years ago. He used play footbal for the team before he got his serious illness. Thank God he got over everything. But we had discussed it a lot, including when he was very sick, what it would be like to run the club together. And it was great when it could finally work out. That's why I'm happy he's got a new job at Viking Stavanger.