FC Nordsjælland

[the_khl]

What a great idea. Cudos Squiggs.

Not going to let anyone down so I've picked a rather young Danish team not far from home, FC Nordsjælland.

​

Full name​

Football Club Nordsjælland

Nickname(s)​

The Wild Tigers[1]

Short name​

FCN

Founded​

January 1, 1991 (21 years ago)
as Farum Boldklub[2]

Ground​

Farum Park, Farum
(capacity: 10,100[3])

Chairman​

Allan K. Pedersen

Head coach​

Kasper Hjulmand

League​

Danish Superliga

2011–12​

Danish Superliga, 1st

Website​

Club home page

Football Club Nordsjælland (F.C. Nordsjælland, or FCN in short) is a professional Danish football team from the North Zealand town of Farum, Denmark. Founded as Farum Boldklub from the merger of the town's two football clubs Farum IK and Stavnsholt BK in 1991, the club changed its name to F.C. Nordsjælland in 2003.[4]
FCN plays in the Danish Superliga, winning their first medal in the 2002-03 season, taking 3rd place. Since then the Wild Tigers have made four appearances in Europe under both the old UEFA Cup format in 2003-04, 2008-09 and in the UEFA Europa League during the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons. Their greatest spell of success has come within the last two years, lifting their very first trophy the Danish Cup in 2010[5] and successfully defending it the following year in 2011, consequently beating FC Midtjylland in both finals.[4][6] They won the 2011-12 Danish Superliga in May 2012 and will thus participate in the 2012-13 UEFA Champions League.
F.C. Nordsjælland plays its matches at Farum Park, which has a capacity of 10,100 of which 9,800 seating and 300 standing spectators.[3][7] The club is known for focusing heavily on youth with a strong talent development.[8] Their play style is often referred to as aggressive attack minded football, where they play a 4-2-3-1 system.[9]

 

[the_khl]

Having qualified directly into the Champions League Group Stages through winning last Seasons Superliga means they are now entering their first Season ever with football at the higest level and it is very interesting to see how they'll cope. For starters their Stadium doesn't cope that well, why they've moved homegames to Parken, Copenhagen.

A team that loves to play football really and does whatever possible to emulate the Barca-style of football makes them a rather interesting prospect to watch, despite without any real top talents, apart from newly promoted vice captain, 20-year-old powerhouse defender Jores Okore.

The real star of the show is their manager, in my opinion at least, Kasper Hjulmand, whom apart from being a very down-to-earth likeable charachter also have a distinct talent for making a team full of decent players tick and perform above what anyone would've dreamed of. He loves technical-based football and is also extremely focused on bringing in players with the right mentality only - no one is bigger than the club and the style of play, a style as mentioned above that is best described as an aggressive attacking-minded 4-2-3-1.

Will keep you posted when they hit the ChL as it can both be a completely forgetable journey but also one that will raise a few eyebrows around Europe.

 

[the_khl]

INS and OUTS

OUT
Having recently sold central defender Andreas Bjelland to Twente for around £3M and Winger Tobias Mikkelsen to Greuter Fürth in the Bundesliga it is vital for the club to bolster towards the upcoming ChL games.

So far the following players have arrived:

IN
Morten Nordstrand, forward (FC København), U21 International midfielder Anders Christiansen (Lyngby BK), Joshua John, forward (Twente) and today 19-year-old defensive midfielder Kamal Issah (Rennes) has been confirmed as their newest player in the squad putting pen to paper on a 3½ year long contract.

Bonusinfo: Joshua John has already been registered in the historybooks of the Superliga having scored 4 goals within the first 35 minutes in his only second appearance - so far he looks a bit of a steal.

http://onside.dk/fodbold-video/fcn-sif-6-1-joshua-john-malamok

 

[the_khl]

Chelsea
Shakthar Donetsk
Juventus
FC Nordsjælland

This could turn ugly for the Danes but on the other hand they've really got nothing to lose here.

 

[the_khl]

Champions League squad with loads of youngsters. I've bolded the ones that I believe could one day be good enough to make the move to a top club. It has to be said I don't know of all the youngsters mind.

Jesper Hansen
Jores Okore
Henrik Kildentoft
Anders Christiansen
Enoch Adu
Nikolaj Stokholm
Patrick Mtiliga
Mikkel Beckmann
Morten Nordstrand
Rawez Lawan
Oguzhan Aynaoglu
Joe Sise
Joshua John
Thomas Villadsen
Søren Christensen
Michael Parkhurst
Mark Gundelach
Kasper Lorentzen
Ivan Runje
Andreas Laudrup
Mario Tičinović
Kamal Issah
David Raagaard Jensen
Seejou King
Søren Henriksen
Lasse Petry
Jannich Storch
Emiliano Hansen
Pascal Gregor
Kristian Lindberg
Johannes Ritter Plum
Andreas Maxsø
Philip Zinckernagel
Samed Barut
Nicklas Mouritzen
Mathias Mejer Knudsen

 

[the_khl]

Andreas Laudrup showing a bit of Champions League form for the Danish U21 side that beat Northern Ireland last night and qualified for the play-offs where England could be an opponent.

Made the nice dummy pass to the wing on the first goal, won the pen for the second and finally scored a bit of a belter for the 3rd. Danes won 3-0.

http://tv2sport.dk/u21-drenge-kan-droemme-videre-om-em

 

[the_khl]

Lost 2-0 away to a very potent counter attacking Shakthar in their first ChL game ever and deservedly so.

Having said that I must admit that was a very encouraging performance from the completely unproven Danes at this stage.

Enjoying the lions share of possession and almost dictating the pace at times with 1-2-3 ping-pong passes reminiscent of the Barca way of play, away from home in Ukraine, shows that this little team could raise a few eyebrows around Europe the coming Months.

For some odd reason Shakthar could prove the most difficult opponent for the club based a few miles North of Copenhagen out of Chelsea and Juve as their game plan is very much to hit teams hard on the counter whereas both Juve and Chelsea would want to dictate play - as the Danes like as well and do pretty well too.

They probably wont progress and they really struggled tonight making the most of all of their possession as the final pass and their final move never really threatened.

The stand out performer, on the pitch, was central defender Jores Okore (alongside forward Wilian and Armenian striker Mkhitariansomething) and his prize has today taken a major leap. I don't think I've ever seen a 20-year-old defender with such composure, pace and strength. Reminds me a bit of a young Micah Richards just seems more calm on the ball.

Believe me this lad will become a world class player if he keep up his game, and my bet is he will become the most expensive player ever to be sold from the Danish Superliga (Agger holds that record). Outstanding talent.

 

[the_khl]

Bit of random Champions League info:

FC Nordsjælland has enjoyed more possession of the ball than any other team participating in this Seasons Champions League so far having played Shakthar and Chelsea.

You can then rightly argue how important all this possession is baring in mind they've failed to register a point let alone score a goal. Not much to be honest.

Tomorrow night Juve will visit Copenhagen and without jinxing anything on behalf of the little Danish club perhaps an upset could be on it's way? The Italians will not like having to run after the ball most of the time for sure.

 

[the_khl]

Out with a bang, humiliated at Stamford beaten 6-1. Again their sheer lack of routine at this stage made the defeat bigger than it probably had to be. Missed the first penalty of the game and could've gone 1-up. A rather evenly contested game then tipped the other way around as Chelsea scored on their second attempt from the penalty spot and it was more or less a walk-over from there on in.

FCN had to cope without CB Okore (injury) and after five minutes his normal CB partner Runje left the pitch on a stretcher, which forced them to play midfielders across the defensive line which certainly didn't help them on the night.

Overall they did well enough in most games and managed a famous draw with Juve, and was extremely hard done at home against Shakthar when they chose to be the most unsporting team ever.

Enjoyed the most of the possession of all teams in the Chl after round 2 having played Shakthar and Chelsea in their first two games, but obviously lacked the cutting edge in the final third of the field. Overall they did ok, but I still feel a little disappointed with them to be honest.

Jores Okore will become a major star one day, I don't doubt that for one second and keep Jesper Hansen could well end up in a top European side come January.

 

[goodspam]

To be fair, it was a really tough group for them.