DANES CALL UP 5-A-SIDE PLAYERS!
Dispute sees stars boycott Wales match ...and John Jensen is the stand-in boss
Denmark have appointed the former arsenal midfielder John Jensen as manager and lined up futsal players for Sunday’s UeFa nations League clash against Wales after an amazing bust-up with the country’s top stars.
Christian eriksen, kasper Schmeichel and the rest of the squad are in dispute with the Danish Fa (DBU) over commercial rights and the turmoil has reached a point where Jensen has stepped in to oversee a team of unknowns.
Denmark are scheduled to face Slovakia in a friendly in Trnava today before flying to aarhus for the fixture against ryan Giggs’s Wales on Sunday. as matters stand Denmark’s elite players will not play.
regular manager age Hareide, who led Denmark to the last 16 of the 2018 World Cup, has been relieved of his duties for both games on the premise that he has not picked this makeshift squad. Jensen, 53, is ready to take his place in the dugout.
The team could comprise players from Superligaen and Denmark’s first and second divisions, but newspaper Ekstra Bladet reported the DBU had also contacted several players of futsal, the five- a- side version of football which uses a hard court and a smaller, harder ball. a number will be genuine footballers, however, with avarta — a second division team — confirming that two players have made themselves available, one being striker Christian Offenberg. The standard of the team would be a far cry from that typically fielded by Denmark, who are ninth in the FIFa rankings but have been beset by internal problems for a year. The women’s team boycotted a World Cup qualifier against Sweden in October 2017 over employment conditions. The DBU were fined £18,000 and warned that Denmark would be barred from UeFa tournaments if another match was called off in the next four years. Failure to play Wales would surely see Denmark expelled from the euro 2020.
The Danish Player association have urged the DBU to reconsider their approach. ‘We have to solve this now, not just dig the ditches deeper,’ Tottenham’s eriksen said.
‘We’re happy to stretch our hand again, even though DBU put it away in the first try. Let’s renew the old deal by one month then we’ll have time to negotiate the agreement.
‘It does not make sense if DBU does not accept that offer. Sign up and we will sit on the plane immediately. We are ready and we will play.’
eriksen added: ‘We could be home in our clubs who pay our wages — at home by our wives and children. There is only one reason why we are here — and it’s not money. It’s because we love to play for Denmark.’
Jensen, who lifted euro 92 as a player and won the Fa Cup with arsenal a year later, said: ‘I see only losers in the conflict, and Danish football losing most of all.
‘When I say yes to help here, it’s because I feel very strongly for the national team and because the most important thing must be that the games will be played after all.
‘I don’t consider the matter between DBU and the players. my “yes” is not an expression of it. I just hope to help us through two matches and that the parties find a solution.’
kim Hallberg, the DBU elite manager, said: ‘We must hold the two matches to avoid millions of fines and possible exclusion of the national team for several years.’