On a cold September night in 2018, Denmark fielded a team consisting only of amateur players, including seven players from the futsal national team, in a friendly game against Slovakia. At this time, few people expected that the support for the national team would reach the height it has today.
The bizarre situation happened after a lengthy contract dispute between the male and female national team players and the player association on one side and the Danish football association (DBU) on the other side. And as the two parties couldn’t reach an agreement in time before the match, DBU had to field a team consisting of players who weren’t a part of the player association, which meant they had to go from club to club outside of the professional and semi-professional ranks.
Despite Denmark’s long history with unions and general support of worker’s rights, the public saw the national team as spoiled and the criticism of the well-paid superstars was massive from start to finish. The amateur players revealed that Christian Eriksen and other high-profile national players had called them and pressured them not to join the national team, and even though the superstars explained they were striking because they wanted to secure better circumstances for the lower league players and small clubs, it didn’t help their cause. The support for the national team was in shambles.
Fast forward a little over four years, and Denmark have just delivered their best result at an international tournament since the Euro victory in 1992 and are about to start the 2022 World Cup, which has brought the normally so quiet and restrained Danes into a state of complete football ecstasy. How did that happen?