gosh, where has the debate raged in the wake of Denmark’s qualification for the european championship finals of 2020.
In one trench we find the romantics, who are not at all satisfied with the Danish national game. In the other the ruler of the opposite point of view, namely that the results at any time may be the most important.
I can follow both sides, as I never have been able to avoid that let me charm of our small country make such heavy requirements as to form for our national team. As if we were Brazil, Spain or Germany.
we are not, but we have experienced something, that makes, that we think as a big fodboldnation. We experienced the WORLD cup finals in Mexico 1986. The oldest of us. And the finals have all the Danish team has been slaves ever since. Also europamestrene from 1992. It is not something that has only emerged in recent years as a response to our national coach is Norwegian.
It was also not something that existed before the 1980s. No way. We got good enough fremelsket creative verdensklassespillere as Allan Simonsen and Henning Jensen, but partly they played not so many international matches, and, secondly, we could not imagine that we could assemble a team that could bite spoons with the big. On landsholdsplan Denmark was just an insignificant nederlagsnation.
But that changed almost by magic. When we first came up with in a big finals, it was with the same as a force. Not just as an outsider, there was to learn.
We could both have been european champions in 1984 and world champions in 1986. We played ridiculously well. We gennembankede powers such as Yugoslavia and Uruguay, and played on a level no one had dreamed could be possible. It is the heritage of all Danish national team ever since has been up against.
Even after the european championship victory in 1992, there were voices who felt that it could have been more spectacular. It could it I also. In particular, in the final against Germany.
And it was a theme again immediately after the tournament finals, where Denmark started out with two times 0-0 against Latvia and Megabahis Lithuania in the subsequent WORLD cup qualifiers. Richard Møller Nielsen did not beautiful football, but in his heart he was a pragmatist. Quite as his successor Bosse Johansson.
Morten Olsen is the only national coach, who has acknowledged the legacy of 1986. He was even a part of the team from Mexico and personified it in an entirely different level than, for example, the ruthless markeringsspillere, Ivan Nielsen and Søren Busk. Most of all, it was Olsen, Elkjær and Laudrup, we cheered. As we called us for the brazilians.
It was also in 1986. But we were never in the 15 and a half years, Morten Olsen was in charge of the national team. In the glimpse we were amazing with the victories of 5-2 over Romania, 3-1 over Serbia, 2-1 at home over Portugal and a 6-0 at home over Iceland as the major highlights.
In the matches we played football, as Olsen would have it. Turnover and technically convincing. Football to the eye. But too often, smoke Olsen’s national team in its own dead end and delivered the matches without tempo and dynamics.
The best performance under Morten Olsen was fighting at the WORLD cup finals in 2002, but it was in the best case, Denmark fjerdebedste finals. As a coach, managed the largest fodboldfigur in Danish football history never to live up to its own high ideals.
It has Åge Hareides hold not been. Only against the small teams.
Our efforts at the WORLD cup finals in Russia was on the artistic level saved by the ottendedelsfinalen against Croatia, but we can’t complain about how the well acclaimed international fodboldmagasin, World Soccer, summarized the Danish efforts:
“Well drilled by Age Hareide they were carried by a few dashes of inspiration by Christian Eriksen.”
the Laconic and aptly. Translation superfluous!
Well, it’s not completely unrealistic to have higher expectations for a team from a small fodboldnation as Denmark? Yes, it may well be, but in this column moving, I am not into the discussion.
It was, instead, my mission is to explain why and how. Where was the expectations from? Not from a special innate artistic dane-gen. However, from our experience of how beautiful it could be.
The adventurous efforts at the WORLD cup in 1986 has in many contexts become a yoke for the subsequent Danish national team. But I hope that it can serve as an inspiration. Otherwise it all becomes too poor.
Morten Bruun
Fodboldkommentator on the Espn channels. Danish champion and european champion once a long time ago. Former coach in the best League in Silkeborg, Jutland. In a lifelong love affair with English and international football.
