Tag Archives: superliga

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I heard a rumour


“Have you seen John Terry?”

As random questions go, this was up there with some of those uttered from my parents.  I was queueing to get some more beer underneath the Sud tribune in Brøndby Stadion when the question was asked by a complete stranger who somehow figured I was English (perhaps it was the socks with sandals combination?).

26895142486_85c86a2c5c_z“Do you mean, have I ever seen John Terry?”  I had once seen the much maligned Chelsea captain in Huck’s restaurant at Elveden CenterParcs back in 2001 apart from playing for Chelsea and England so I wasn’t lying when I answered in the affirmative.

“No, here.  He is sitting over there” the women said, waving her arm in a direction that was either towards the Gents toilet or the Main Stand depending on how literal you wanted to be.  I hoped for Terry’s sake it was the latter otherwise he’d be all over the front pages (again) for the wrong reasons (again).

Depending on which rumour you care to believe, Terry was at tonight’s Superliga derby between Brøndby IF and FC Nordsjælland because a) he’s good friends with club owner Jan Bech Andersen and accepted an invite to pop over as he would not play again this season (or ever) for Chelsea due to suspension, b) he was about to take over as head coach from Aurelijus Skarbalius who had joined a long list of managers who had heralded a new dawn but simply made the club darker or c) he was actually planning on buying out Andersen and running the club himself. There was a fourth reason of course, which was why I was here with Ben. And that is you can’t beat a beer (or three), a sausage (or two) and a good jump around on the terraces on a Monday night.

This used to be a regular occurrence for me. For over two years Copenhagen had been my midweek home and instead of spending every night in my apartment watching Kroning Gade (Danish Coronation Street), I went off in search of football. In two years I managed to watch games at 37 different Danish and Swedish grounds but there was nowhere really like Brøndby (OK – apart from Malmö). My very good friend and Ultras expert Kenny Legg ranked the Copenhagen Derby played at the Brøndby Stadion as, as he eloquently put it, “F’ing insane” – and he’s a man whose experienced Weymouth versus Dorchester Town (twice!). Quite simply it should be one game that every football fan takes in once in their lives.

26323371404_525d2c9a37_zA rare need for a work trip to Copenhagen fortuitously fell on the very day Brøndby were hosting their cross-city rivals, FC Nordsjælland from leafy Farum. Whilst it’s currently the fashion to talk about clubs overcoming insurmountable odds to win the league (Leicester City were 5000/1 to win the Premier League in case you missed that little fact), we should pause and reflect on the story of FC Nordsjælland who broke the FCK dominance of winning seven of the previous nine titles.  Whilst the club had always been respected for its youth development, they hadn’t really made a mark on domestic football in Denmark until 2010 when they won their first major honour, the Danish Cup.  A year later they retained the trophy, once again beating FC Midtjylland in the final.  However in 2011/12 they led from the front almost on day one and never looking back.  Not only did they cap that season with the title but five of their players were called up to the National team.

It was always felt that the dominance of FCK on the domestic game, fuelled by perennial Champions League money would never be broken but FCN proved it could be done.  Whilst FCK won the title twelve months later (with FCN hosting Chelsea and Juventus in the Champions League ironically at FCK’s Parken), the last two titles have been won by two more “upstarts”.  Alas, neither were Brøndby.

Last season the story over here, and also back in England, was of FC Midtjylland who again if you believed the media, won the league through the footballing equivalent of card counting.  The club, based a few miles up the road from Legoland had been on the fringes of the honours for a while but it took the investment of Brentford owner Matthew Benham and his statistical approach to both recruitment and retention of players to reach that Tipping Point that saw them crowned as champions.

26895138446_4e8aec971e_zBut back to today.  Ben had procured the tickets for a ridiculous 60DKK (£6) each but failed to remember that we were in Denmark and so a 7pm kick off meant 7pm Danish time, not 6pm that was displayed on Soccerways….Ben has only lived in Denmark for 8 years now.  He was quickly forgiven when we took our place at the front of the beer and sausage queue though.  He brought me up to speed on the state of play in Denmark’s Superliga.  FCK were as good as champions again, holding a seven point league over this season’s surprise package, SønderjyskE.  Then came AaB (champions in 2014) and FC Midtjylland (champions in 2015)…and then Brøndby, some seventeen points behind FCK with six games to play.  “So the title still isn’t out of the question Stu”.  He is a Spurs fan and up until the draw with Chelsea was absolutely convinced Spurs would win the title on goal difference.

With only 2nd and 3rd place qualifying for the Europa League and having painfully lost a two-legged Danish Cup semi-final to FCK it looked bleak for a return to European football.  That was unless they could get three points tonight.

Brøndby IF 2 FC Nordsjælland 1 – Brøndby Stadion – Monday 9th May 2016
The warm, yellow liquid currently raining down on us reminded us why it’s a bad move to stand at the bottom of the Sud Tribune. Fortunately the liquid appeared to be beer, thrown in the air to celebrate Kamil Wilczek’s goal. Brøndby had conceded in an all too familiar manner just three minutes before much to the groans of a number of fans around us.  A rather animated chap, in full kit with the name “Aggar” on his back tried to show his mate how to clear an attacking ball that had led to Marcondes’s equaliser, using a small teddy bear.  She wasn’t impressed and stormed off just as Wilczek’s goal went in.

Whilst the game was fairly entertaining, with Brøndby understanding that they key to winning the game was to stop the opposition getting the ball (possession is 9/10th of a win as well as the law), the real spectacle was the fans.  It may have been five years since I was last standing on the terraces here but you never forget the feeling of the ground beneath your feet literally bouncing as the fans jumped up and down, sank their lungs out and waved the flags.  You cannot fail to be impressed.  This was what watching football should be like.  Passion.  Of course it helped that you were trusted enough to have a beer, although it did seem to be the standard pratice to throw it up in the air when the home side scored.

John Terry couldn’t help be impressed by the atmosphere – certainly a little less manufactured some of the grounds in England.  He at least won’t have to learn a new language and of course their liberal attitude to the vices means he may stay off the front pages.  Then again, it is just as likely that Celtic boss Ronnie Deila will pitch up here in a few weeks once the Celtic gig has finished.

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My name is Stuart and I am an addict


I didn’t realise I had a problem until I was confronted with it.  The problem was storage.  I had run out of room for my football socks.  Come on admit it, we all have a few pairs don’t we?  Some people collect shirts, others collect programmes (I have a few of those myself) whereas some individuals I wont mention (Dagenham + Dan is a clue) have to keep their match tickets in pristine condition.  Those things do nothing for me.  To me, I express my love of the game with football socks.

CMF says this is a “Syndrome”.  It is obsessive compulsive.  Just because I like socks and never throw a pair away does not make me a bad person.  I never complain about her collection of Marc Dorcel DVD’s so why should she make me feel bad about my collection?  After all I get enjoyment from wearing my socks (and yes I also don’t mind sharing her “hobby” as well”). Sometimes we even swap items in our collections, but that is another story completely.

It all started out of necessity.  I went to a Wasps rugby game, that is how long ago it was – they didn’t have the London bit in their name, despite the fact they played in London, as opposed to now where they are called London Wasps despite playing in Buckinghamshire. It was raining, my shoes had a hole in and my feet got very wet.  I needed to get some new socks and so I went and bought a pair of rugby socks from the club shop.

That was back in 1998 and I still have that pair of black and gold socks today.  After that I was hooked.  It was the comfort, the almost rebellious sign against the system.  I wore purple Fiorentina socks on business meetings.  When people said things like “nice socks” I would launch into the tale of who they belonged to and where I got them.  I wore a pair of olive and chocolate Kappa Werder Bremen socks to a relative’s wedding, going to great lengths to find a new pair of brown shoes that matched the socks. Continue reading →

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I just don’t get it?


If I had to be cast away on a desert island and could only take a few items I am quite clear what number one on my list would be…OK, number two then behind Eliza Dushku.  MARMITE.  As the saying goes, you either love it or hate it.  I have been in the former’s camp since the age of one.  I have it on toast, I cook my roast potatoes in it and I have been known to smear it on the naked torsos of some lucky ladies (all in the past of course if CMF gets round to reading this). BUT this week we had some potentially devastating news.  Denmark had banned Marmite. How could I survive my weeks out here without my little jar of happiness?

Unsurprisingly us Brits were up in arms and the Times, Guardian and BBC all took this very seriously.  Twitter went into meltdown, pleased that the fiasco of Super Injunctions was being buried under controversy somewhere else in the world. Even the US-based Huffington Post picked up on the story. Reprisal actions were announced – “Boycott Ikea” came the call from “Dave, Chelmsford”.  Bless him.  He obviously assumes that Scandinavia is in fact a country on its own right.  “Let’s ban Carlsberg” – another great suggestion from a chap in Devon.  Except Carlsberg isn’t brewed in Denmark anymore, rather in Northampton.

Ben and I planned our own black market operation, secretly importing the Extra Mature version for ex-pats.  We had quite  a few addicts lined up when the Danish Food Agency came out with a “clarification” statement.  No it wasn’t banned, but the sale of it would be regulated due to the ingredients, and only sold via outlets with a licence.  So like methadone then.

So, the most “liberal” country in the world to do business in, the least corrupt country in the world in 2010, the world’s happiest county, the first country that legalised pornography (back in 1969), a country where the age of consent is 15 and one where having sex with animals is technically legal, a country which had the first ever hippy “state” in Christiana can also tell it’s people what it can and cannot eat.  These Danes are crazy.

And to prove the fact even further we saw contrasting events during an evening of football to show the good and bad in the people.

Brondby came into the game with FC Norsjælland needing a favour from FCK.  With the runners up in the Superliga this season going into the Champions League (albeit at the start of the Qualifying Rounds) it was down to a three horse race.  OB were in prime position, sitting five points ahead of Brondby and FCM with just two games to go, but the first of those was at home to Champions FCK who had only lost one league game all season.  So the hope was for an FCK and a Brondby win thus taking the race down to the last day.  But of course supporting FCK was a bridge too far for many Brondby fans I knew so they had already resigned themselves to the Europa League.

The visitors to West Copenhagen, FCN had won the Danish Cup again on Saturday, in a game delayed by a monumental lightning storm.  They had beaten FC Midtjylland 3-2 to win the cup for the second year in a row and thus had already packed their beach towels for the season.  So a formality for Brondby surely?

I met up with Alan who has been enjoying a few months in Copenhagen going to as much football as he can jam in, with the only criteria he has to get his wife’s tea ready on the table when she comes home from work.  A Glaswegian, who lives in Brighton and thus supports Rangers and The Albion.  We got to the stadium a good hour before kick off and contemplated where to go in the ground.  A chap came up to Alan and thrust two bits of paper in his hand and walked off.  They appeared to be two tickets, the ones you can these days print at home (well for European football anyway).  They had the right date on, the right ground, the right teams.  Surely people in a country that is wicked enough to ban Marmite wouldn’t do such random acts of kindness?  Perhaps they felt they should apologise for the misery they were going to cause us.

Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth we took them and proceeded to put the same amount we would have paid for tickets over the bar of the 1964 Cafe (Apparently named after the year the club were formed and not after the New Order song of the same name), which being in Denmark was approximately 2 pints.

Brondby IF 1 FC Nordsjælland 1 – Brondby Stadion – Wednesday 25th May 2011
We approached the turnstiles with trepidation.  What if they were the missing link in a series of murders?  And only the killers would have the tickets?  Would scanning the bar code alert Interpol to come and grab us?  The light went green and we climbed the 87 steps to the top of the South East stand, sitting in one of the empty seats in the row behind “Just in case”.

The game had an already resigned end of season feel to it.  The crowd was just over 11,000 and that seemed generous.  FCN had brought 37 from our joint efforts at counting them.  Considering they are 40 minutes away on a train it wasn’t that impressive.  News filtered through that OB had taken the lead.  Minutes later Brondby opened the scoring themselves when Clarence Goodson slotted the ball home.

The highlight of the first seventy five minutes was undoubtably the half time competition for Pige 2011.  Pige in Danish means girl which is quite amusing to say the least, and here was a competition to vote for the best pige of 2011.  Leaflets had been handed out prior to the game for us to be able to text vote and now we had the parade of the six finalists.  With a cheeky wave and a wink, Pige number 5 you got two votes from the British contingent.

The second half didn’t set us alight to be honest.  News filtered through of a second for OB versus FCK and the game was up.  Our attention was grabbed by an incident in the front of the terrace below us.  A bit of pushing and shoving between a fan and a steward.  The steward appeared to fall backward and hit his head.  He didn’t get back up.  The fan simply pulled his hoodie tighter and sauntered through the exit.  Not one steward made any effort to go after him nor really see what was wrong with their colleague.  Seven minutes later just as FCN equalised and the plastic cups of beer stared to be thrown down towards the injured party a paramedic with a stretcher turned up.  Whilst we criticise the stewarding at our grounds I would rather have it our way rather than like this.

This soured the end of the game for many of the fans and people drifted towards the exit long before a chorus of boos signalled the end of the game.  Hard to know how to sum up a day in Copenhagen like this really…Good, Bad and Ugly?

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That’s neat, tiger feet


The Wild Tigers of FC Nordsjaelland is an obvious place to spend a Monday night.  Unlike the predictability of the Scottish Premier League, Denmark does at least offer some competition despite the dominance of FC Copenhagen.  After round thirteen of Superliga games FCK were just 14 points clear of second place, but had been dumped out of the Danish Cup.  With second place now gaining access to the Champions League (ironically potentially at the expense of Scotland) FCK’s triumphant march to a seventh title in ten years is not seen as a show stopper anymore.

Instead the focus turns to those teams who could grab that second place.  Brondby, despite all of their “rebirths”, internal restructures and false dawns had yet to convince anyone that they would be dusting off their passports next season.  Instead well run smaller clubs such as OB, FC Midtyjlland and FC Nordsjaelland now have a shot, allowing the fruits of their young set ups to get a foot in the first team and shine. Continue reading →

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Boldklub and Hedges


Danish football is back….what I hear you say, you didn’t know it had gone?  Well it had been asleep for two months whilst that little tournament took place in South Africa.  The Danes had gone into that tournament like a bloke on a first date – knowing that in all probability he would not get anything at the end of the evening, but on the chance he would it was be disappointing when it reached the next stage.

So consequently most fans simply forgot about their exit at the hands of Japan and re-focused on the Superliga.  Opening weekend saw FCK win (predictable), OB win (predictable) and Brondby lose (becoming more predictable).  The last game of the weekend saw the first game back in the top flight for Lyngby BK, one of the two Superliga teams who play in the northern suburbs of Copenhagen (FC Nordsjaelland are the other just up the road in Farum).  Their visitors were AaB who hail from the northerly city of Aalborg and were champions themselves just a few seasons ago. Continue reading →

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A kick in the Baltics


Half term comes and goes three times a year and means us parents have to find new things to amuse the kids with.  I suppose I am lucky that I “live” in two of Europe’s most cosmopolitan cities (for cosmopolitan read expensive) which means I have to entertain them twice over.  Things in life are rarely free, but this week I found something perfect…..for me!  A free friendly between two premier clubs, well two clubs who have seen better days in their respective leagues.  Roll up Brondby and Flora Tallinn.  We have been friends with Flora for awhile, despite having an average attendance that rarely breaks the three figure mark (see our last visit here) and looked forward to renewing our acquaintance, as long as they brought their fans with them (tall, blonde, love a drink and female of course).

With just two weeks to go until the re-start of the Supaliga season in Denmark, Brondby needed to be in tip top form to overcome the Europa League challenge of AGF and Esbjeg this season with the top two spots almost out of reach with OB and FCK setting the running.  They also had to get over the loss of Rasmussen, one of their brightest stars who had joined Celtic during the Winter break.

guess the game here is off then?

The game was an afternoon kick off somewhere on the Brondby campus.  They do not do things by half here, so alongside the impressive 29,000 stadium were a host of training and reserve pitches.  We had been to Brondby a few times, enjoying the hospitality of the Cafe 1964 Bar.  So with the Little Fullers wrapped up to the nines we headed across to Glostrup by bus and wandered around the training complex until we saw a sign pointing us in the right direction.

Brondby IF 4 FC Flora Tallinn 0 – Brondby IP – Wednesday 17th February 2010
So after a 10 minute walk through the complex of training grounds we arrived at the designated pitch where a crowd of a couple of hundred were already taking in the match day experience.  And by that I mean they had cracked open the beers.  Sod the fact there was no stand, just a pile of snow (a big big pile of snow) the Danes simply got on with it.  We had arrived just in time by the looks of things as the teams were lined up to kick off.

tights lino?

Or so we thought.  What had actually happened was that the game kicked off a minute before, Flora kicked off, gave the ball away, Brondby got a corner, they crossed it and Remco Van der Schaaf headed home…23 seconds gone. And we had missed it.  Thankfully, the electronic scoreboard replayed the action to us all (joke…I got an update on my phone!).  It was blooming chilly.  So chilly that the officials had donned tights for the occasion.

Overlooking the ground is Denmark’s biggest flag pole apparently, although Big Ben claims it is the world’s biggest, but having been to the peace village in the DMZ in Korea I would believe the crazy North Korean who pointed out a similar one to me there than a Tottenham fan any day.  The girls headed off into the snow and I stood having a beer with a guy who then started doing some warming up exercises and I discovered he was one of the Estonian team substitutes…

yep I was right

One became two in the 26th minute when a clearly offside Peter Madsen hooked the ball over the keeper after a cross from the right from Krohn-Deli.  As you would expect from a pre-mid-season game played on an artificial training pitch in sub zero temperatures it wasn’t high on quality, and if truth be told after Michael Krohn-Deli had headed home in the 75th minute, we were at the exit on our way back to the warmth of Cafe 1964.  Apparently the fourth came in the 82nd minute from the Dutchman van Schaaf but we were tucking into the hot chocolate/Tuborg classic and FIFA09 on the X-Box to care too much.

Pre-season games are rarely exciting and always fail to deliver any promise.  Add in freezing conditions, two little Fullers and tights and it ranks up there with the Zenith Data Systems 1st round clash at Upton Park in the late 1980’s with Plymouth Argyle…pointless.