Caroline Graham Hansen

Caroline Graham Hansen (born 18 February 1995) is a Norwegian professional footballer who plays as a winger for Spanish Liga F club FC Barcelona and the Norway women's national team.

Hansen started out her professional career playing in the Norwegian Toppserien with Stabæk.

Hansen made the move to her first professional club Stabæk in August 2010, and made her Toppserien debut the same week, as a 73rd-minute substitute in the match against FK Donn.

Hansen recorded an assist as Stabæk won 3–0.

Stabæk won the league title later that year with a 3–0 home win over Trondheims-Ørn.

Hansen represented Norway at youth international level, and made her debut for the senior team in 2011.

She was a part of Stabæk's 2011 Norwegian Women's Cup winning team, who beat Røa on penalties after extra time.

Hansen assisted Katrine Pedersen's equalizer during the extra time, but was the only Stabæk player to miss in the shoot out.

She then spent the second part of the 2013 Damallsvenskan season in Sweden, playing for Tyresö FF.

In 2013, 18-year-old Hansen played a major role in the Norwegian team that won silver at UEFA Women's Euro 2013.

In August 2013, Hansen signed for Swedish Damallsvenskan champions Tyresö FF.

In the second half of the season she started five of her seven league appearances and scored three goals.

She also featured in Tyresö's Round of 32 tie against Paris Saint-Germain and Round of 16 tie against Fortuna Hjørring in the 2013–14 UEFA Women's Champions League.

Hansen made the move to the Frauen Bundesliga in 2014 to play for VFL Wolfsburg, where she began to develop multiple serious, long-term injuries between the years of 2015 and 2018.

Hansen returned to Stabæk in January 2014 to complete her high school education, as she did not get the grades necessary to do so in Sweden.

She was also concerned by the instability of the club, which would end up folding the following summer after reaching the 2014 UEFA Women's Champions League Final.

She continued to be monitored by several leading European clubs and intended to move away again after finishing school in June 2014.

Understanding that female footballers do not earn enough money to retire on, Hansen was planning for her career after football.

Upon returning to Stabæk she arranged to play Toppserien matches for the women's team while training with the senior and youth male teams.

On 8 May 2014, German club VfL Wolfsburg announced they had signed a two-year contract with Hansen.

Norwegian media stated her annual salary as around £100,000.

Near the end of her first season at Wolfsburg, Hansen was diagnosed with jumper's knee.

This injury ended up destroying most of the tendon in her knee, leading to years worth of injury troubles.

The injury kept her out of the remainder of Wolfsburg's 2014–15 Champions League competition and the 2015 Algarve Cup with Norway, as well as that year's Women's World Cup with her country.

In 2015, she missed that year's World Cup due to injury, and in 2017, she was part of the Norway squad that had their worst-ever finish in a Euro tournament with 0 goals and 0 points.

Hansen sustained another injury, a kneecap fracture, near the end of the 2015–16 season.

Despite this, she reached two UEFA Women's Champions League Finals with the club in 2016 and 2018, and won 8 major trophies- 3 league titles and 5 DFB-Pokal titles.

In the midst of her club success with Wolfsburg, she struggled with her national team.

The following month, Wolfsburg reached the 2016 UEFA Women's Champions League Final, where Hansen sat out with the injury as her club was defeated 4–3 on penalties to Lyon after a 1–1 draw in regular time.

2019 was a breakout year for Hansen, when she signed for 2019 UEFA Women's Champions League finalists FC Barcelona, and was one of the most noteworthy players of the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup with Norway.

She was nominated for multiple year-end awards for the first time, including The Best and the FIFA FIFPro World XI.

Her successes continued with FC Barcelona as she was integral to the 2019–20 side that won their first league title since 2015.

Hansen then went on to win the UEFA Women's Champions League with the club for the first time in 2021, as well as the continental treble.

Hansen is widely regarded as one of the best wingers in the world for her performances for both club and country.

Hansen was born and brought up in Oslo, Norway, in the neighborhood of Tåsen.

She is the eldest child of Petter Norman Hansen and Bettina Graham Hansen, and her brother, Fredrik, also plays football for American Division I university St. Bonaventure.

Hansen played for Lyn as a part of mixed-gender teams of both boys and girls up until the age of 14, because her coach said she was a bad influence to the boys on the team.

This decision started debate within the club, and as a result, Hansen moved up to play as a starter with Lyn's G94 team, made up of boys a year older than her.

Hansen says this is where she learned to play smarter and make better choices with the ball, because the boys were physically advantaged by that point.

Hansen played for Lyn up to age 15, and was a part of the team that won the under-16 girls' class in the Norway Cup.