Growing up, Tomas Totland would leave his native Norway and come to America every summer to visit his mother’s side of the family, to see his grandparents in Vermont, his cousins in New Jersey.
“I told my grandfather when I was younger,†he recalled recently, “there was one day I would play in MLS, and he was like, ‘Yeah, right. That’s never going to happen.’ So it’s pretty cool to be here. I think they’re stoked that they can finally come and watch me play games.â€
It wasn’t easy and it took a lot of time, but Totland, 24, now can call home a place he has only visited. After a two-year pursuit by City SC sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel, the team signed the defender to a three-year contract with an option for a fourth year, and the American half of the Totland family now can see him a lot more easily.
“I just felt like this was the right time for me to come and try the league,†he said. “It had always been a dream for me, and I felt in my career now after I had been to Sweden, played Europa League, done all of that and had Lutz and ºüÀêÊÓƵ being that interested, just felt it was the right move for me to come here and try it.
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“I love America.â€
The story of Totland’s move to America begins with his mother. Nina Hamilton-Totland is from Vermont, where she was the NCAA freestyle cross country skiing champion in 1994 at the University of Vermont. His father, Tore Totland, had come from Norway to go to the University of Colorado, where he was a two-time All-American in cross country skiing. Tomas Totland’s older brother was born in Boulder, Colorado, but before Tomas was born, the family had moved back to Norway for Tore to finish his engineering studies.
But because of his mother, Totland is an American citizen, and that makes him a lot more appealing to MLS clubs because he counts as a domestic player rather than an international one. His exposure to America has been limited; he’s been to Disney World, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and the Hamptons, but the team’s current California training camp is the first time he’s been to the West Coast. Before that, he hadn’t been west of ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
While his mother passed on her citizenship to Totland, she didn’t pass on a passion for cross country skiing. Tomas has done it and appreciates that he’s had some really good teachers, but his love always has been soccer, spending hours each day at the field near his home.
He was too young to join the senior team at the club at Bergen, on Norway’s west coast. But the coach would text him and tell him to come over the field to play, which just happened to coincide with when the main team was working out, and Totland would join them. He became a right back when he was called into a Norwegian youth camp and the planned right back got sick. He’s been there since.
Totland may have wanted to come to America, but that didn’t make the pursuit for Pfannenstiel easy.
“Very, very long,†Pfannenstiel said.
He first contacted Totland almost two years ago, before City SC had played a game, and kept doing it. Every transfer window since then, Pfannenstiel made a bid for Totland.
“I just always was aware that his mom is from Vermont,†Pfannenstiel said, “which is not too bad, I have to say. Getting a domestic Norwegian, or a domestic U.S. player with a Norwegian father — you could do it in five different ways — it’s just a massive signing for us because once he did get his passport, and we were talking to him a long time before I suddenly realized that half of MLS is hunting the kid, and I think we put an effort in to work to get him over and he was just as loyal as we were because he never thought of joining the massive, big teams in the southern part of the country and came to us and is really happy. Tomas was a really important signing.â€
Totland agrees: City SC’s persistence played a part.
“I think when a team is on you that much, I think it showed that they have a plan for you,†he said. “As a player, that’s all you want to hear because you want to go to a place where they believe in you and want to make you a better player. So that’s why I ended up in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.â€
Totland wasn’t playing hard to get. When he was first contacted, he had just left Norway and started with Hacken in Sweden, and the club was chasing its first-ever championship, which it won. Then Hacken wanted to keep him, in part because the club expected his transfer value to go up, and then in the summer of 2023 the club was about to play in the Champions League qualifying round and, after failing to advance, the Europa League. Totland wanted that experience.
Hacken’s run in the Europa League was a disaster, with the team going 0-6 and getting outscored 17-3 in group play. But Totland still saw it as a valuable experience, one that comes with a parallel to City SC’s quick exit from the MLS playoffs last season.
“Even though we got zero points, which is embarrassing,†he said, “at the same time, I got a lot of good references from it. Now I know how to play those games and how our team should have played those games because we played those games as if we were in the Swedish league. ... Every club needs a few tournaments before they really know how to play them.â€
“I like his first touch, like his runs,†said City SC defender Joakim Nilsson, who played in Sweden. “Smart player, but as a person, he’s calm, he’s a funny guy.â€
And now he’s got a chance to see the America he hasn’t seen. The Grand Canyon tops his to-do list.
“Me and my girlfriend want to see more of the countryside,†he said, “like Yellowstone and up towards (Glacier National Park). I’m going to be able to see so many different cities when I travel, so in that way, it’s going to be great, but the Grand Canyon and national parks are on my bucket list.â€