A coffee wagon that has been converted into a portable video analysis hub is making its way back into the FC Nordsjaelland (FCN) training base when the sudden thud of  football on crossbar brings it to a halt.

It is the very specific sound of a Conrad Harder effort on goal, a missile that can be launched by his left foot, right foot or head — one that Manchester City will come face-to-face with on Tuesday when they take on his new side, Sporting Lisbon, in the Champions League.

On The Athletic’s visit to Nordsjaelland in the summer, analysts linger in the centre of the pitch to observe this crossing and finishing competition between Harder and reserve goalkeeper William Lykke, also 19, at the end of training.

𝐒𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 🔟✂️
𝐅𝐞𝐣𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 🔟🥳

Conrad Harder 👏💥#sldk pic.twitter.com/D6dUQftGWP

— FC Nordsjælland 🐯 (@FCNordsjaelland) January 27, 2024

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Former Chelsea and Ghana midfielder Michael Essien, now the assistant manager at Nordsjaelland, is on crossing duty and there is barely a delivery across the 20 minutes that is not devoured by Harder.

The Dane can do finesse but, when it comes to his preferred finishing style, it is Harder by name, harder by nature. Even the under-10 team’s training session was paused as the youngsters watched and gasped in disbelief.

There is no waiting for the ball to drop. Harder takes on every shot as early as possible. He strikes volleys as if seeing the ball like a watermelon and, when it is airborne, his hang-time is reminiscent of a certain Portuguese forward.

“My idol was Cristiano Ronaldo… but then Erling Haaland came along,” Harder tells The Athletic once the session is complete.

It is helpful that the teenager introduces Manchester City star Haaland into the conversation himself. As a tall Scandinavian striker with bulging thighs, bouncing blond hair and a left foot with the power to outpace Hawk-Eye’s ball-tracking technology, the comparison is inescapable. Five years Haaland’s junior, Harder does not want talk of the Norway international to become an albatross around his neck. “He is a really good player and I’m watching his game to try to learn and go in this direction,” Harder says.

“People compare a lot, especially with (Manchester United’s Danish forward Rasmus) Hojlund, who is also scoring goals now, but I don’t want to be one of them. I just want to be my own (man). That is the way I think.”

This conversation took place in July and, since then, the Danish striker has been involved in a transfer tug-of-war, rejecting Brighton & Hove Albion on deadline day to sign for Ruben Amorim’s Sporting in a €20million (£16.8m; $22.1m) transfer.

So far he has come off the bench in two of Sporting’s Champions League matches and on his league debut registered his first goal and assist against Avs FS. He added a brace against Portimonense in the Taca de Portugal last month.

From the sidelines, Harder looks huge, but up close his boyish appearance is startling. Nicknamed ‘Mosquito’ by Nordsjaelland team-mate Mario Dorgeles due to his fear of those insects when visiting the Right to Dream academy in Ghana two years ago, he conveys the aura of someone who already sees himself as a leader in the team.

During FCN’s small-sided training games with rolling substitutions, Harder’s competitive edge is obvious as he laments goalkeeping mistakes and harries defenders as if his life depends on it. He is more of an all-round player than a pure poacher but it is clear he lives for scoring goals, which is why he is described by some at FCN as “goal horny” — a Danish way of saying he is not overly happy when he does not put the ball in the back of the net.

Harder was having his breakout year with Nordsjaelland but, such is his talent, it was curtailed by that deadline-day transfer tussle between Brighton and Sporting, with Italy’s Napoli the other interested party earlier in the summer.

Clubs had been aware of his talent for some time, due to his goalscoring record for Nordsjaelland at youth level. He got 15 in 18 games for the under-17s, and 26 in 22 for the under-19s, but he still had to be patient before breaking into the first team.

Harder made his senior debut in the final game of the 2022-23 season and then made 33 appearances across all competitions in the last one — just nine from the start — scoring seven goals. In the early weeks of this season, he had started all six league games, scoring twice in a 2-2 draw with Midtjylland and producing a clever assist for what turned out to be the winner as they beat FC Copenhagen 3-2.

The plan was never for Harder to move on during the summer window. Indeed, Brighton were originally looking at next summer as the ideal time to pounce, but Sporting coming in so strongly forced them to act earlier.

This was to be Harder’s first season as a regular starter for Nordsjaelland, where he would be given space to develop and adjust to senior football. He even signed a new four-year contract in the summer, a step that underlined that intent, but money talks and, once the threshold of €20m was breached, the club had to accept he was off.

The pathway presented by Brighton was for him to go out on loan before becoming a first-team player. In their favour they had evidence of managing a phased integration from Danish football to the Premier League as they signed Simon Adingra from FCN in summer 2022 before sending him to Belgian sister side Union Saint-Gilloise for a season. He returned a more experienced player and is now an important part of the Brighton squad.

Although Viktor Gyokeres is the main man at Sporting, they could offer Harder an immediate role in the squad and, ultimately, that swayed his decision. It was earlier than those who have overseen his development would have liked him to make that step and there is the risk that such a leap this early into his career could be too much, but he backs himself and believes he will be a success in Portugal. The riches of Premier League football will always be on offer if that is the case.

Nordsjaelland have sold over £90m worth of African talent developed at their Right To Dream academy in Ghana, but Harder was the latest off the conveyor belt from their Danish academy, with Andreas Skov Olsen of Belgium’s Club Bruges and Brentford duo Mikkel Damsgaard and Mathias Jensen all previously moving for sizeable fees.

Adingra has excelled at Brighton (Jan Kruger/Getty Images)

Harder’s decision to move to Sporting was not the first tough call he has had to make. At 14, he decided to leave FC Copenhagen and move to Nordsjaelland.

“I didn’t develop as much as I wanted, so I wanted a new challenge and FCN was a good option for me,” Harder explains.

“I don’t know if there is a secret (in the way Nordsjaelland operate), but there are so many coaches around you all the time, working on the details at every training, it definitely helps. It is easy to go in the first-team squad, as you have been learning the same playing style the whole way.”

Harder may want to avoid too many comparisons with Haaland and Hojlund, but he does share an agent with the latter’s two younger twin brothers, Oscar and Emil, who play in Germany for Eintracht Frankfurt and Schalke respectively.

People at Nordsjaelland always knew he was destined for big things. They just did not expect that day to come so soon.

Whether Harder is ready is another question, but he does not come across as a teenager who will be daunted by a price tag or the shadows of Scandinavian strikers looming large.

(Top photo: Maciej Rogowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb noticed a stranger approaching. She thought maybe she had spilled something and he was going to give her a heads-up. Instead, he stopped near their table and paused.

“Hey, Coach,” he said. “I thought it was you. I’ve gotta ask …”

She waited.

“Is JuJu really 6 foot 2?” he asked.

Gottlieb laughed. She answered — yes, JuJu Watkins is listed at 6 feet 2 — then joked that it depends on how much of Watkins’ iconic bun is counted. A big guard in the even bigger Big Ten was an enticing prospect for this L.A. sports fan. Even in the summer, he was eagerly anticipating the season, which will see USC — a team that appeared on national networks just three times last season before its postseason run to the Elite Eight — on ESPN, FOX, FS1 and NBC nine times before the Big Ten tournament.

He thanked Gottlieb, wished her luck and went on his way.

The exchange felt oddly familiar to Gottlieb, just not as the head coach of USC, a program she took over in 2021 when it was a basement dweller in the Pac-12. Instead, it reminded her of experiences during two seasons as a Cleveland Cavaliers assistant, when insatiable NBA fans wanted to break down every potential matchup and moment.

“For those of us who have really followed this game for a long time, we’ve known there have been great players before, we’ve known the great stories before, but now to see the rest of the world catch on and pay attention is really cool,” Gottlieb said. “Then you add to it this kind of position I’ve been thrust into, where we’re one of the programs that has one of these star players who is getting a ton of this attention. It’s a great responsibility. It’s a great opportunity.

“None of it is lost on me, that we’re sort of in the apex of this moment.”

More than 2,500 miles across the country, UConn coach Geno Auriemma can relate. For nearly four decades, some of the greatest stars to play the game have come through the Huskies’ gym. Yet the fanfare didn’t match what he saw on the men’s side.

Until now.

In early October, UConn announced it had sold out its season ticket packages for the first time since the 2004-05 season, after Diana Taurasi won a national championship as a senior.

That didn’t happen during the Maya Moore or Breanna Stewart years, or after 111 straight wins or four straight national titles. Not until now — Paige Bueckers’ final season in Storrs.

“There are people who have never had an opinion that have an opinion now or they want to know things that they never wanted to know, but now they’re familiar with names and events that in the past they wouldn’t think twice of,” Auriemma said. “The die-hard fans, they can’t wait for the season to start. But the casual fan has tuned in and got a sip of it, and now they’re intrigued.”

That groundswell of attention for women’s basketball is undeniable. Every number backs it up. Last season’s NCAA Tournament set viewership records, including a title game that drew 18.9 million viewers (besting the men’s title game by nearly 4 million, something most fans assumed could never happen). Iowa star Caitlin Clark’s uncanny knack for the big moment and ability to nail logo 3s drew in millions, but those fans found other players, teams and games to enjoy. Even taking Iowa’s NCAA Tournament games out of the equation, last year’s ESPN viewership rose 43 percent during March Madness.

Clark’s draw, as well as Angel Reese’s at LSU, continued into the WNBA. Indiana Fever attendance and viewership numbers soared; the same was true for Reese’s Chicago Sky. Again, these new WNBA fans stayed for the other massive talents.

Stars propel sports and leagues. They lure casual observers and convert them to die-hards. After Clark and Reese departed for the WNBA, there’s no letdown for college basketball stars helping carry the sport’s weight, but attention will be focused on two.

Anchoring two coasts, two conferences and two national title contenders are USC’s Watkins and UConn’s Bueckers. They’re playing at programs that are iconic in their own ways and recognizable worldwide. They’re both elite — potentially generational — and have the ball in their hands more than almost anyone else.

Watkins is the reigning Freshman of the Year attempting to resurrect the Trojans, who haven’t been relevant in her lifetime. She’s the hometown kid who turned out stars like Kevin Hart, Saweetie, LeBron James and John Wall at last season’s home games. The smoothness to her game and effortless quality make it seem like she has never rushed on the floor, whether she’s pulling up from 3 or attacking the basket (or hitting a shot anywhere in between).

Kevin Hart was in attendance to see JuJu Watkins and the USC Women’s Basketball team ✌️#ncaaw #fighton pic.twitter.com/31PLjQDknN

— WNBA Got Game (@wnbagotgame) December 20, 2023

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Bueckers, who won national Player of the Year as a freshman four years ago, is in her final season at UConn. Even with its vaunted legacy, few high school players were more heralded coming into Storrs than she was. And yet, in her fifth year, a national championship — of which UConn has won 11 — has eluded Bueckers. She’s a rangy guard with enough savvy inside that even when she played the four last season, she was still named an All-American. A player so confident that she trademarked her nickname, “Paige Buckets,” before her sophomore season.

Watkins’ and Bueckers’ play, storylines and celebrity, as well as USC and UConn’s December meeting (a rematch of last season’s Elite Eight) are reasons people, including new fans, will tune in for women’s hoops this season.

But unlike players before them with those same attributes, they’re competing at a time of unprecedented transformation.

Because of an investigation that exposed grievous disparities in NCAA men’s and women’s basketball, the NCAA was forced to invest more in the women’s NCAA Tournament. Because of growing attention, ESPN — the women’s NCAA Tournament media partner — anted up last year and paid big money for the media rights to broadcast the event. Because of NIL, players such as Bueckers and Watkins are recognizable outside of women’s basketball circles, partnering with major companies like Nike and Gatorade. Watkins was spotted at the 2024 Cannes Lions Festival, threw out the first pitch at a June Los Angeles Dodgers game and won the ESPY for Best Breakthrough Athlete. Bueckers attended the U.S. Open, where Frances Tiafoe and Coco Gauff shouted her out, sat front row at New York Fashion Week and was featured on the JumboTron at a Los Angeles Rams game.

“There’s no boundaries on us, and because of that, you’re seeing talent, you’re seeing coaching, you’re seeing fan support, you’re seeing viewership — you’re seeing all of those things,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said. “This is probably the biggest movement in our game in its history, and it couldn’t happen at a more perfect time. … There are so many people tuned in; we met the moment.”

To continue meeting that moment, women’s basketball needs the next wave of stars. It needs teams with compelling storylines (Staley’s Gamecocks are a perfect example as reigning champs coming back to repeat after an undefeated season), but it also needs individuals like Watkins and Bueckers, whose stories and journeys this season will be as compelling as their play on the floor.

“It’s great that we have them because it would be a shame to follow up the star power of last year and then not be able to add to it this season,” Auriemma said. “We need to showcase these guys and these teams, and we need to play well. We need to give all these new people that are going to be watching something to be excited about so they want to come back.”

If Bueckers and Watkins do what their coaches believe, then new fans will certainly have reasons to keep tuning in and finding their next favorite players once Bueckers and Watkins move on to the pros.

Auriemma and Gottlieb, who have been around this game for decades, know this moment isn’t just different; it’s long overdue. What comes next (or, really, who comes next) will be what pushes the sport forward.

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Top photos of Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins: G Fiume / Getty Images, Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

It’s been said — often by me — that every city is at its best on marathon day. The bigger the city, the better the day, as hundreds of thousands of citizens line the courses for hours to cheer on tens of thousands of runners, most of whom they don’t know.

Now factor in the sparkling day autumn morning and afternoon in New York on Sunday, the sun glistening off the harbor and the downtown skyline as some 53,000 runners bounded (OK, some didn’t do much bounding, but who cares) across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, tagging all five boroughs on the way to the finish, and you have the recipe about the perfect marathon.

The people of Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, take the medal for the loudest, longest throng. Tip of the cap to them, and to the people of the South Bronx who turn that part of the course into a mile-long fruit stand. You’ve never seen so many free bananas and oranges — and a good number of cookies and munchkins on offer, too.

Now add that star-studded cast of Olympians and other champions, and marathon day gets even more perfect.

I will admit bias. I’m a New Yorker. Sunday was my 15th New York City marathon. And as my mind drifted from the overwhelming gratitude for all that support from a crowd as colorful as the city to the slowly mounting pain in my quads, also kept thinking, “Wow, there must be some serious racing going on up front.”

And there was.

I finished and caught up with the results — Sheila Chepkirui outkicking defending champion Hellen Obiri in the final mile to win in 2:24:35 and Dutch star Abdi Nageeye topping a loaded field that included the Olympic champion and defending New York winner Tamirat Tola in of 2:07:39.

While I was sorry to have missed the finishes — sorry, those folks are a little too fast for me — I relished what this race had been.

It was a race, not a time trial, which so much of marathon racing has become.

In Chicago last month, with the help of pacers on a deadly flat course, Ruth Chepngetich shattered the women’s marathon world record, posting a time of 2:09:56.

Men’s races on these courses regularly flirt with the two-hour mark. It’s just a matter of time before that becomes the standard there. Then there’s New York and Boston. Hilly undulating courses without pacesetters. It’s all tactics and waiting for the moment to make a move or deciding to try to cover a competitor’s.

It’s a race that Tola and Obiri and a host of other Paris Olympians entered with high hopes despite having competed just three months ago on a brutal course. Because here they could think their way through the course, play cat-and-mouse for two-plus hours and then decide when to go.

They didn’t have enough on Sunday down the stretch. But what a treat it is to watch this kind of race. There’s a place for testing the limits of human achievement. New York — and Boston, too — will never be it.

And thank the running gods for that.

(Photo: David Dee Delgado / AFP via Getty Images)