I don't doubt they are friends, they played together for the national team for ages. Alfie seems to like to stir the pot a bit occasionally as well.
Put it this way, I think every norwegian is surprised every time Fjørtoft gets brought up as some kind of "itk" journalist internationally. He works the television circuit for the bundesliga broadcaster over here and is always several days or weeks behind the rumor mill.
And I can't stress this enough: The man is an absolute cock. The time he was shot down by Erling himself in the middle of a interview because he tried to switch to english to get his 5 minutes of fame tells you everything about how much a leech he is