Connections - Denmark

With the World Cup looming and an international break this week we take the opportunity to look at Tottenham’s connections with one of the countries competing. Denmark is one of the few countries we have yet to encounter in European action. We have however met sides from that country in friendly action and Danes have featured in our first team.

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Allan Nielsen  will be remembered for scoring the winning goal in the dying moments of the League Cup Final 1999. In total he scored 18 goals in his 115 games over four years with Spurs before he fell out with manager George Graham.  He had joined Spurs from Brondby and would later move on to Watford. He made 44 appearances for his country including the 1998 World Cup and scored seven goals.

Our latest encounter came in July 2004 we played FC Copenhagen, the game actually taking place in Gothenburg , Sweden during Tottenham’s pre-season training camp at the start of Jacques Santini’s brief reign as our manager. The Danish Champions took an early lead and Dean Richards leveled for us approaching the half hour. Jermain Defoe scored an excellent goal on the hour but they equalized with quarter of an hour to play.  Surprisingly the game was watched by over fifteen thousand.

Nielsen will League Cup and Man of the Match award

We traveled to Copenhagen in September 1964 to play a Select XI, in a game we lost 1-2 Frank Saul scoring our goal.  The summer of 1995 saw us meet the Silkeborg club as we opened our tour of Europe. The hosts beat us 1-3 with Jason Cundy getting our goal. That was the only game in the country before we moved on to Sweden. 

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We had of course toured Denmark in 1951, when we played three games in three days. A tour that was covered previously in- http://www.indiaspurs.com/blog/the-stationary-tour

We of course currently have the Danish ace Christian Eriksen in our side who to date has seventy five full caps and 21 goals for his country. He has previously played two games at the 2010 World Cup when he was the youngest player. He is also the youngest man to score for the country in European qualifying games.

Although technically a Scot Henry Erentz who played in the 1901 Cup Final and won the Southern League with Spurs came from a Danish family.

Frank Arnesen was our Director of Football for just over a year. He played against England twice, scoring once.

Frank here with new signing Michael Carrick.

While for England the two countries first met in 1948 and the first Spurs connection was in the third game (1956) Ted Ditchburn and Johnny Brooks both winning  their last caps in a 5-2 win. 

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Gascoigne and Waddle both made their international debuts against the Danes. While Teddy Sheringham won his 50th cap. Gary Lineker played them twice as a Spur, once as captain, and one goal, (he also scored in his pre-Spurs days) . Other Tottenham men to feature have been – Greaves, Townsend, Robinson, Defoe, Dawson. Terry Venables was England manager V the Danes once. 

COYS
Keith Harrison.
t- Keith 16024542
f - https://www.facebook.com/keith.harrison.9659
My profile / archive is @ http://www.indiaspurs.com/keith_harrison.html

Other countries in the Connections series are @
http://www.indiaspurs.com/blog/hotspur-towers-the-international-index
Top - Nielsen and Eriksen.