3. Kenneth Kristensen - His Weight in Shrimp
Striker Kenneth Kristensen had been performing well for Norwegian Third Division club Vindbjart during the 2002 season, scoring 14 times, but spent that summer adopting a more laid back approach. "He has had a relaxed summer eating seafood on Flekkeroy (an island fishing port off Norway's South coast)," Vindbjart chairman Vidar Ulstein complained. The solution was simple, to send Kristensen to Flekkeroy IL, the island's football club, also in the Third Division. Of course there had to be some fee in exchange and there is one thing that Flekkeroy has in abundance: fresh seafood. An arrangement was made to trade Kristensen for his weight in shrimp. "I had no idea if it was a joke or deadly serious," Flekkeroy chairman Rolf Guttormsen reportedly remarked, "The Vindbjart chairman said that it was a bit of both, but they wanted the shrimp. No problem, we have enough shrimp". At a boxing style weigh in, Kristensen was found to be worth 75kg of uncooked crustacean, or about 535g of shrimp per goal in the previous season.
How did he do? Unfortunately there's no record of how Kristensen's new seafood heavy diet effected his goalscoring ability. What we do know, though, is that the following year Flekkeroy finished second in their division, while Vindbjart were fifth. In 2004 Flekkeroy won and were promoted to Norway's second flight. Kristensen was obviously something of a trendsetter in terms of a "will work for food" attitude in Norwegian football as, in 2005, former First Division player Bard Erik Olsen came out of retirement to play for Fifth Division Tronvik in exchange for a pizza a week.