At their previous appearance at a World Cup, Denmark made headlines for being immature. Or, to tell it more accurately, they drew attention to themselves because a couple of their players were messing around in a childish fashion and a prank backfired. Stig Tofting and Thomas Gravesen, the shaven-headed midfielders, chased Jesper Gronkjaer, the delicate-looking winger, around their practice site trying to spray water at him. When they got him, they mistakenly fired a jet in his eye, to the extent he needed medical attention.
Boys will be boys, especially after spending weeks together under pressure in hotels and dressing-rooms. But immaturity is not a charge likely to be levelled at the 2010 Denmark squad, at least as it lines up on paper. Eight years after they reached the last 16 stage, Denmark will tonight entrust the task of matching that performance to a starting XI against Japan in Rustenburg that may very well include eight men well into their 30s.
Expect a 99th cap for Martin Jorgensen. No need to spell out the extra motivation for him. A victory over the Japanese would see him becoming a centurion for the country he has served in three World Cups, all of them progressing beyond the group stage. Jorgensen is 34, and in January waved farewell to 13 years in Italy's Serie A where he had served Udinese with distinction for seven seasons and Fiorentina for five and a half. These are long spells for an overseas player in modern Italian football, and if Jorgensen was never quite a limelight-seeking superstar, he was hugely popular with fans of both clubs, and widely respected by opponents. The rest of Italy dreaded his corners, for the special curve he can put on a dead ball.
Jorgensen is now back with Aarhus, whom he first joined in 1993 and rejoined six months ago, sensing that his first-team place at Fiorentina might not be quite regular enough to guarantee his inclusion in Denmark's squad. "It was an emotional decision to leave, because I have happy times in Italy," he told fans on departing. He had left some nice keepsakes, like the goal against Liverpool that helped Fiorentina into the knockout stages of the Champions League.
If Jorgensen is the grand old man of the Danish side, he has many companions with whom he has shared numerous big tournaments. Jon Dahl Tomasson, who was with him at the 2002 World Cup, has had a varied club career, sometimes under-rated because his yield of goals was not as high as his recruiters expected. That was the case at Newcastle United, where Tomasson moved in 1997 after scoring freely at Heerenveen in the Dutch league. Obliged to play centre-forward - his natural position is as a second striker - he struggled, and so missed the 1998 World Cup. But the dozen years since have demonstrated his pedigree over and over again: at AC Milan in Italy, Villarreal in Spain, Stuttgart in Germany, and now in a second spell with Holland's Feyenoord.
And then there are the wingers. Dennis Rommedahl, at 31, still has some of the acceleration that defined his early years that brought him transfers to Holland's PSV Eindoven, to Ajax, his current employer, and to Charlton Athletic when they were in the English Premier League. Rommedahl's goal against Cameroon is the reason Denmark remain in with a chance of progress here. Like Jorgensen, a win for Denmark today would line up a 100th cap for Rommedahl.
The man who has kept him company on the other flank for so many of those caps is Gronkjaer. The 32-year-old was born in Greenland. "I think that makes me Greenland's most famous footballer, because I'm probably Greenland's only professional footballer," the former Chelsea winger once joked. His voyages since have taken him to mainland Denmark, to Chelsea and Birmingham City in England, to Atletico Madrid in Spain, to the Bundesliga's Stuttgart and finally to Copenhagen. He is a player with a velvet touch, fine close control, a wispy sort of winger who can frustrate as well as thrill. But Japan should beware of every one of this senior quartet.
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