Danish Football

Few people in Denmark are likely to forget June 1992, when the All-Denmark team almost inexplicably managed to win the European Championship. This was an unprecedented event within elite sport. Denmark had not qualified for the final round of the Championship in Sweden, but ten days before the opening match UEFA asked it to enter the competition instead of Yugoslavia. Without systematic preparation and with a hastily recalled All-Denmark side, mostly coming direct from seaside holidays, the expectations were minimal. But without the pressure of expectation, the inconceivable happened: the All-Denmark team scored a success, culminating in their 2-0 victory over the reigning world champions, Germany, in the final.

The European triumph in 1992 was surprising, but in a way consistent with the international view of Danish football. Since the mid-1980s, the All-Denmark team has been popular in Europe, because it has sprung surprises in several major competitions, playing in an inventive and creative way, which has given football fans good experiences. The team has normally radiated delight in playing and demonstrated a fighting spirit and Denmark‘s small size has often called forth sympathy in matches against the traditional football superpowers.

In sporting terms, however, Denmark is no longer small. Participation in no less than eight of ten pos sible final rounds of the European Championship or World Cup since 1984 most recently the 2002 World Cup in Korea-Japan is unusual, when compared with the big football nations.

Football is a national sport in Denmark and when the All-Denmark team plays important matches, the streets are deserted. The list of television broadcasts with the highest-ever ratings in Denmark has football in both first and second place. Top of the list is Denmark‘s World Cup quarterfinal against Brazil in June 1998, which was watched by half the population.

Thousands of jubilant Danes received the returning European champions in the Town Hall Square after the unexpected victory in Sweden in 1992. Photo: Scanpix Nordfoto/Thomas Sjørup.

History

The English games culture soon caught on in Denmark. Football was introduced in 1879 by Copenhagen Ball Club (Kjøbenhavns Boldklub, KB), established in 1876 and Europe‘s oldest football club outside Great Britain, and the first actual football match on Danish soil took place in 1883. The national association, The Danish Football Association (Dansk Boldspil-Union, DBU), was founded in 1889 and over the next decade organised football developed through the growth of a forest of football clubs all over the country and through the slow, but sure introduction of football in Danish schools.

Until around 1960, Danish football was characterised by its stubborn insistence on the players‘ amateur status, alongside extensive export of its best players to foreign clubs. Nonetheless, the country managed to achieve a few memorable international results, especially the bronze medal at the 1948 Olympic Games in London and the silver medal at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.

The efforts to dissolve the prevailing amateur concept in Danish football were not crowned with success until 1977, when a private professional league outside the DBU framework was proposed. This forced the opponents to give in and from 1978 it became possible to pay footballers for their association with the clubs. This decision also occasioned a more general review of the conditions of elite football in Denmark. At the All-Denmark level, a new kind of sponsorship agreement was made with the Danish brewery Carlsberg, which among other things meant that a full-time coach could be employed.

The Road to Success: 1984 European Championship and 1986 World Cup

The full-time employment of the German Sepp Piontek as national coach in 1979 initiated the development of the All-Denmark team into a success. It is significant and noteworthy that a foreign coach was required for the Danish talent mass to flower.

The breakthrough came on 21 September 1983, when the Danish team beat England at the legendary Wembley Stadium in London and thus took a crucial step towards Denmark‘s first ever European Championship qualification. Three weeks before the match, a Danish newspaper arranged a competition for the best Danish football song. The winning chorus: ‘We are red, we are white, we are Danish dynamite‘ was to accompany the team‘s success during the following decade like a kind of trademark.

On the background of the European Championship qualification, the international magazine World Soccer chose Sepp Piontek as ‘Best Coach in the World‘ and the All-Denmark team as ‘European National Team of the Year‘. This gave it something to live up to in the final round of the 1984 European Championship in France, but the Danish team fulfilled the expectations. Supported by a huge red-and-white army of genial Danish spectators, the team consolidated its good reputation with its refreshing and offensive playing and made it to the semi-finals, where it was beaten by Spain.

The two All-Denmark coaches Morten Olsen (front) and Michael Laudrup during training before the friendly match against the Faeroe Islands in August 2000. Photo: Polfoto/Lars Poulsen.

From the crowd of Danish spect tors grew the roligans-movement (rolig being the Danish word for peaceful) as a contrast to the violent hooligans, who have plagued many major football events. The Danish roligans‘ colourful and convivial behaviour in connection with international matches through the 1980s until the mid-1990s among other things resulted in the awarding of UNESCO‘s ‘Fair Play Trophy‘ in 1984.

The success continued with the qualification for the final round of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. The All-Denmark team now had the maturity for international competitions, but without losing its creativity and delight in playing. The 6-1 victory over Uruguay in particular ranks among the major memorable matches in Danish World Cup history. The match made especially the two Danish ace strikers Preben Elkjær Larsen and Michael Laudrup well-known in the international world of football. But in the eighth finals, Denmark again faced its evil spirit from 1984: another defeat by Spain ended the Danish World Cup adventure.

Richard Møller Nielsen Denmark‘s most winning coach

When Sepp Piontek retired as national coach in 1990, his Danish assistant Richard Møller Nielsen took over the team and despite its failure to qualify for the 1992 European Championship, he managed to guide the team into a new period of success culminating in the European Championship title. The main new names on the team were the sharp dribbler Brian Laudrup, younger brother of Michael Laudrup, who was not an All-Denmark player during this period, and the goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel.

The period after winning the European Championship title showed that it was more difficult to be a champion than to become one. Nonetheless, unexpected encouragement was received with the victory in the 1995 Intercontinental Cup in Saudi Arabia, where Denmark beat Argentina 2-0 in the final. The team also qualified for the final round of the 1996 European Championship in England, but the reigning European champions were sent home to Denmark already after the preliminary leg. The feeble Danish effort damaged the goodwill with which the Danish style of playing had hitherto been regarded internationally.

Denmark Won the World Cup in 1971! What the male All-Denmark team has yet to achieve, the women achieved long ago. In 1971, when woman‘s football was still a new phenomenon, an All-Denmark team qualified for the final round of the World Cup in Mexico. Watched by 110,000 spectators at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, Denmark won the final against the host nation by 3-0. From an early stage, Denmark influenced the development of football for girls and women, which was admitted as a sector of DBU already in 1972. Since then, the Danish women have won the European Championship once (1979) and in 1996 they participated in the Olympic Games

1998 World Cup and the Farewell of the Laudrup Brothers

Richard Møller Nielsen retired in 1996 and the Swede Bo Johansson became the new national coach. He made changes to the side and soon only two of the European champions were left, viz. Peter Schmeichel and Brian Laudrup. Denmark qualified for the 1998 World Cup in France, but the playing was by no means spectacular. It was quite different in the eighth final against Nigeria, where the All-Denmark team in exhibition style floored the African favourites with a 4-1 victory.

In the quarter-finals, they met the reigning world champions from Brazil. That match became one of the most exciting in the competition, but also removed Denmark from it after a narrow 2-3 defeat. In addition, the match was the last All-Denmark match for both 34-year-old Michael Laudrup and his five years younger brother Brian, so that Danish international football lost its two main creative forces.

The weakening was very obvious to everyone when a poor All-Denmark team barely managed to qualify for the 2000 European Championship in Holland-Belgium and had to return home from the final round as loser of its group and with a humiliating score of 0-8.

The New Team

After Bo Johansson left the post of national coach in 2000, former captain, Morten Olsen, took over as national coach.Olsen advocated offensive and entertaining playing and from the start, much was therefore expected from the coach.

The first big task was to ensure that the All-Denmark team qualified for the 2002 World Cup in Korea-Japan. This was achieved respectably and people again believed that the Danish team could play its way to the decisive matches in the competition. However, that did not come to pass, and Denmark was eliminated from the cup, after having beaten former World Champions, Uruguay, and reigning World Champions, France, in a 3-0 defeat to England in the eighths finals.

Morten Olsen‘s football philosophy is oriented towards the offensive and it was therefore natural that he changed the playing system after taking over the All-Denmark team. The preferred system has become a 4-3-3 formation, which gives the best scope for the Danish team. It creates an offensive front with three strikers, who must be two usually very fast players on the sidelines (normally Martin Jørgensen from Udinese, Jesper Grønkjær from Chelsea or Dennis Rommedahl from PSV Eindhoven) and a single centrally placed striker (Ebbe Sand from Schalke 04 or Jon Dahl Tomasson from AC Milan). This forces the opponents to keep the chain of defence further back in the field.

In the fall og 2003, the Danish national side assured its participation in the European Championship in Portugal 2004, after having won its qualification pool.

The Largest Number of International Matches Played Peter Schmeichel (1987-2001) 129 Michael Laudrup (1982-1998)   104 Morten Olsen (1970-1989)       102

Football in Denmark

In Denmark, football is organised in two organisations: The Danish Gymnastics and Sports Associations (Danske Gymnastik- og Idrætsforeninger, DGI), which mainly organises football as an exercise sport and has around 250,000 members, and DBU, which is Denmark‘s largest specialist sports association: its approximately 308,000 members, including 56,000 girls and women, constitute around 18% of the country‘s organised sports practitioners. DBU represents Denmark in the international football organisations UEFA and FIFA.

There are more than 1,600 football clubs in Denmark. Danish club football has not experienced the same international breakthrough as the All-Denmark team and only the teams of Brøndby Football Club (Brøndby IF) and Aalborg Football Club (Aalborg Boldklub) have participated in the prestigious European Champions League Cup. However, the overall standard of the national league, since 2001 the SAS League (SAS Ligaen), has been rising during the past twenty years. On average, the SAS League matches are watched by around 7,300 spectators, but almost 40,000 normally turn up when the two rival Copenhagen teams Brøndby IF and FC Copenhagen (FC København) meet.

The DBU Football Schools

In addition to the All-Denmark teams, DBU is responsible for the training of coaches and managers, competition organisation and activities for children and young people.   During the past decade, the association has paid particular attention to football for children and dedicated football schools have become a particular success, both in Denmark and abroad. Now more than 200 schools every summer receive more than 25,000 children for seven weeks of football playing and training. In addition, a micro football school has been established, where children aged five to seven can ‘play‘ football for a whole week with their parents.

A remarkable offshoot of the football schools was created in 1997 when a Danish aid organisation, in connection with its relief work in the former Yugoslavia, introduced the football school concept in its work with children and young people across national, religious and cultural barriers. It was a success and since then the Danish-led Cross Culture Projects Association has held 109 football school courses in Bosnia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro with the participation of more than 22,000 children and 2,000 voluntary trainers. In 2001 the initiative was honoured with a special prize: the UEFA Special Contributions Award.

Playing football in the field, DBU‘s football school in Marstal. Photo: Scanpix Nordfoto/ Finn Hjorth.

Football Export

Danish footballers have always been coveted by foreign clubs. The first player to sign a contract was Carl ‘Skoma‘r‘ (Shoemaker) Hansen, who in 1921 was bought by Glasgow Rangers in Scotland. A larger exodus of players happened after the 1948 Olympic Games, when several players from the bronze-winning team were offered good contracts in Italy and France.

Before the change to professional football in 1978, players were constantly being exported, especially to Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Scotland and the USA; the best were generally sold to Italy and Germany. Between 1960 and 1987, around 350 players went to foreign clubs. However, before 1971 professional players could not be picked for the All-Denmark team, which naturally meant that the Danish results were generally poor.

More recently, Danish players have mainly been sold to England, Germany, Holland and Belgium. At the less traditional end of football, there is a Danish player on the Fijis and several players in Japan, China and Australia.

The All-Denmark team on the rostrum in Gothenburg, Sweden, after the final round of the European Championship in 1992. Photo: Scanpix Nordfoto/Palle Hedemann.

Big Danish Names

Allan Simonsen (b.1952) became internationally known while playing for the big German club Borussia Monchengladbach in the 1970s. With this team, he among other things won the German Cup three times as well as the UEFA Cup in 1975 and 1979. He was top scorer in the 1977 European Champions League Cup and the same year was chosen as Player of the Year in Europe. In 1979 he went to FC Barcelona, which he helped to win the 1982 European Cup Winners competition.

Peter Schmeichel (b.1963) was one of the world‘s most prominent goalkeepers in the 1990s; in 1992 and 1993 he was chosen as the best in the world. His impressive list of achievements among other things includes championships with Manchester United, Sporting Lissabon and the Danish club Brøndby IF, as well as the European Championship with the All-Denmark team. Schmeichel retired from his career in the summer of 2003.

Michael Laudrup (b.1964) is the internationally best established Danish footballer ever. With his sublime technique and eminent eye for the game, he became a prominent and highly regarded player in several of Europe‘s big clubs: Lazio and Juventus in Italy, Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain and Dutch Ajax Amsterdam, where he ended his active playing career.

Morten Olsen (b.1949) brought his evident leadership qualities from the field to the coach position, when he ended his playing career after 102 matches for the All-Denmark team, where he was libero and organised the defence with a cool overview.   He began his career as a coach in Brøndby IF in 1990, in 1993 he went to the German Bundesliga club FC Köln, where he had also been a player, and in 1997 to the Dutch Ajax Amsterdam. Since 2000, he has been the All-Denmark coach.

Hummel and Select

At a time of intense competition between large, world-famous sportswear brands, it is noteworthy that the kit of the All-Denmark team has been sponsored by the same firm, hummel, since 1978. Hummel is a Danish sportswear manufacturer which has mainly specialised in clothes for the two big national sports: handball and football. On several occasions, the firm has created sensational new designs; in recent years the hummel clothes have had a rather unexpected success as fashionwear outside the world of sport.

For more than fifty years, DBU has likewise used the same ball supplier, Select. An important reason is probably that the firm was founded by a former All-Denmark goalkeeper, Eigil Nielsen, whose requirements of a quality football led to the development of new ball materials. The Danish firm is still one of the largest football manufacturers in the world and many of the best club teams, including Juventus in Italy, play with Select footballs.

Birger B. Peitersen
Senior Lecturer, cand.mag.

Further Information

Dansk Boldspil-Union (DBU)
(The Danish Football Association)
Idrættens Hus
Brøndby Stadion 20
DK-2605 Brøndby
(+45) 43 26 22 22
www.dbu.dk
dbu@dbu.dk

Foreningen af divisionsklubber i Danmark
(The Association of Danish League Clubs)
Livjægergade 17
DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø
(+45) 3525 1545
df@df.dbu.dk