Former Palace head coach has won a cup final in Norway and says chance to challenge for league title was a pull.
“W hen it’s a good day, it’s absolutely stunning, so we’ll take that,” Laura Kaminski says with a laugh about the rainy west coast of Norway. The English former promotion-winning Crystal Palace coach is referring to Bergen, the place she now calls home Brann, she has taken to her heart since her appointment in January.
After Brann failed to qualify for the Women’s Champions League owing to a 4-0 second-leg defeat by Austria Vienna, they secured a cup final success against Aalesund, handing Kaminski a first trophy on the continent.
At Brann, she is following in the footsteps of her fellow Briton, Martin Ho, and also Leif Smerud, who replaced her at Palace and who she succeeded at Norway’s reigning champions. Kaminski was sacked by Palace in February 2025, midway through their first Women’s Super League campaign, and a move to Norway “wasn’t on the cards”.
After taking a much-needed break post-Palace, which she says gave her “a lot of time to reflect on what happened there”, Kaminski was ready to go back into a No 1 job after becoming a head coach, rather than an assistant, for the first time at Palace in 2024.
Kaminski says it has been a “great learning curve” having before worked at promotion-winning Tottenham, for the England Women youth teams and at Charlton before moving to Palace.
Kaminski gained her Uefa A licence in 2018.