There is something quietly impressive about a manager who gets sacked, reflects honestly on what went wrong, and then lands somewhere better. Laura Kaminski is doing exactly that in Bergen.
Kaminski was relieved of her duties at Crystal Palace in February 2025, midway through the club's first Women's Super League campaign. Within 48 hours of a phone call from her agent and a recruitment agency, she was on a plane to Norway. Now she is coaching Brann, sitting four points clear at the top of the league with seven games to go, and has already won a cup final against Aalesund. Not bad for someone who, by her own admission, had never really thought about working outside England.
The Palace chapter, without the revisionism
What makes Kaminski's account of Palace worth listening to is that she does not rewrite history. She calls it "a crash course", credits chairman Steve Parish and the people around the club, and admits there are things she could have controlled better. That is the honest version, and it is rarer than it should be. She also learned more in those 18 months, she says, than in the previous 18 years of coaching.
Palace were eventually relegated despite the small improvement under Leif Smerud, the man who replaced Kaminski and who she herself had succeeded at Brann. This is a small world. Kaminski had also previously worked at promotion-winning Tottenham, with England Women youth teams, and at Charlton before Palace. More than 15 years in coaching, her UEFA A licence earned in 2018, juggling multiple jobs and sometimes paying to do the work. The landscape for women's football coaches has shifted considerably since those days, and she is one of the people who helped shift it.
The [WSL's demands on its managers](/uprise/football/wsl-talking-points-olid-must-weather-united-storm-arsenal-wasteful) have grown sharper as the league's profile has risen. Kaminski found that out the hard way. But the instinct to find a project that genuinely fits her rather than just the next available job is exactly the kind of self-awareness that a difficult sacking can produce, if you let it.
Why Norway made sense
After Palace, domestic opportunities came along but Kaminski says none of them felt like the right match. When Brann came calling, the pull was clear: a club that competes for trophies, European football, and room to grow. "What head coach doesn't want to compete for trophies?" she says, and there is no good answer to that.
The transition has not been entirely smooth. Brann failed to qualify for the Women's Champions League after a 4-0 second-leg defeat by Austria Vienna. But the cup final win and a league title race are concrete things to point to, and Kaminski's hunger sounds genuine rather than performed. She describes watching Bundesliga games at half-time and mentally running her own substitutions. That is not someone who has switched off.
Winning promotion with Tottenham and Palace in England is one thing. Winning abroad, in a different football culture, flying to games across a country proud of its own football identity, is another. Kaminski knows that, and she wants to prove she can do it.
On the evidence of her first season in Norway, she is on her way.