Fun comes before performance: training at Nørrebro United in Copenhagen.
Photo: DBU
The whole of Denmark is hoping for a continuation of the football fairy tale this Saturday, which began so dramatically with Christian Eriksen’s cardiac arrest in the opening game against Finland, but has now led to the quarter-finals of this 16th European Championship – the encounter with the Czech Republic in the Olympic Stadium in Baku. 1000 fans have traveled to the city on the Caspian Sea to cheer on their team.
As the father of the unexpected success, the Danes celebrate coach Kasper Hjulmand: 49 years old, once briefly Bundesliga coach at FSV Mainz 05, since summer 2020 head coach at the national association Dansk Boldspil-Union (DBU). Calmly and with a clear head, he led the Danish national team into the round of the last eight. In Mainz, the tactical nerd was still accused of not reaching his players emotionally – probably because he always remained calm and collected even in a series of defeats. After eight months, he had to leave in 2015, and many Mainz players regretted it, precisely because they thought he was so human. The Danish footballers of today love him: “For me he is a really good coach, but also a friend of the players,” said Joakim Maehle.
The fact that the generation around Maehle and Co. has already made it into the quarter-finals of the surprise teams is attributed to the Copenhagen-based Jesper Jacobsen also to Hjulmand’s youth philosophy. Jacobsen, 37, is the main person responsible for children’s football at DBU. He, too, is full of respect for Hjulmand: He is not only a gifted coach, but also the co-founder of the new Danish football philosophy, which Jacobsen sums up in one sentence: “Everyone can play football!”
In concrete terms, this means that every child can play in a club, regardless of how far their footballing skills are already developed. “We don’t split up into first, second and third teams up to the U14, but the children all train together,” is how children’s soccer coordinator Jacobsen describes it. The focus is on the child. Denmark’s association must, at least in rural areas, try to attract young talent: there are many well-equipped football fields there, but not enough youngsters.
It’s the other way around in big cities like Copenhagen. There is no shortage of children willing to play football, but rather football pitches, and the clubs’ waiting lists are long. In the meantime, the clubs have come up with a new strategy. At Nørrebro United, for example, the coaches come straight to the small, fenced-in hard courts, which are often in the backyards of social housing estates. The children then only have to leave the house for a short time, and then they are with their coaches. If there are games against other Copenhagen clubs, the little players are sorted into different teams according to their level of performance in order not to cause frustration. “But in the end the result is not that important,” says Jacobsen. “The game should be like a continuation of training.” Do the children care whether they win or lose? “No no. They’re paying close attention to that. But the coaches don’t give the result that much importance. We want the kids to develop further. That’s why there is no table ranking up to the U9. “
At the end of 2020, 310,000 organized footballers were members of a DBU club – with a population of 5.8 million. Jacobsen believes that the national team will play so strongly at the European Championship that will lead to an additional run on the football clubs. In this respect, head coach Kasper Hjulmand has provided new DBU members in two ways: After all, he is the co-author of the book “Holdning og handlinger” from 2006, on whose ideas the association’s philosophy for young people has been developed over the past 15 years has been.
The youth national teams of Denmark are now doing well, quite a few of the quarter-final players on Saturday made it to the semi-finals of the U21 European Championship in 2015, for example Yussuf Poulsen from Leipzig. “Yes, we also achieve good results with the elite teams in the junior division,” said a delighted Jesper Jacobsen. But this is of little importance to the DBU’s children’s soccer coordinator: »It is not important to me whether our best land great successes. I want to ensure that of the 150,000 children who are currently playing, 150,000 continue to play as adults. Because they love it and because they enjoy it. “
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