FC Midtjylland pushes to defend the title
The Wolves are keen on being the only team apart from FC København to celebrate two consecutive championships this century
Already done with the European cups, after finishing fourth in their Champions League group, FC Midtjylland moved away to the next challenge: try to become the only team other than FC København capable of retaining the Danish league title this century. Since Brøndby IF won it three times in a row, in the 90s, no-one but the Lions from the capital have been able to keep their fans smiling for a second consecutive season. The Central Jutland Wolves believe they are up to the task, having kept their main assets, like an excellent pair of center-halves, and ensuring the return of yet another former club academy hero in Jonas Lössl. The second half of the Danish Superligaen started yesterday and tomorrow the match schedule includes the games from the two main candidates to the title, the reigning champions and Brøndby IF, who also seems to be ready to break a 16 year fast.
By the time Brøndby IF won those three titles in a row, FC Midtjylland was no more than an idea. And a revolutionary one, once the club was created at the turn of the century as a result of pure business strategy rather than irrational love. Resulting from the merge of Ikast FS and Herning Fremad, rival clubs from neighbouring towns that ate each other’s fans in midwestern Jutland – Jylland in Danish, hence the club’s name –, FC Midtjylland was promoted to the top-flight right in their first season. The club was then mainly known for investing in the youth academy and soon some of their homegrown products started to catch the eye of powerful foreign clubs. It was the case of Simon Kjaer, who is currently with Italian Serie A leaders Milan and was sold to US Palermo for four million euros, in 2008, after a couple of runner-up places in the Superligaen, behind FC København in 2007 and under Aalborg BK in 2008. More were to follow and some of them came back, giving coach Brian Priske a way to fight the supremacy of FC København, who won three of the last five leagues.
Reassembling club heros
“It’s huge to be back home. There are so many people in the club who mean so much to me…”, Lössl said when he signed the four and a half season contract that brought him back, after almost seven years in foreign countries. Lössl was moved to EA Guingamp, in France, in 2014, one season prior to FC Midtjylland’s first Danish title, and since that day also played for SV Mainz, in Germany, and for Huddersfield Town, in England. He comes back at 32 years old in a move that left Sven Graversen, the club’s sports director, “insanely happy”, as he himself described it. “Jonas was one of our first academy products and knows the club inside and out. It’s a perfect match”, Graversen said after closing the affair. And Lössl, who claims he is prone to “achieve something” he still has to win but the club “has won meanwhile”, is not the only one coming back. Already before the start of the season FC Midtjylland had guaranteed the return of exciting winger Pione Sisto, also a club alumni, who had been sold to Celta Vigo for six million euros in 2016 and this season came back for a bearable 2,5 million euros fee. Team captain Erik Sviatchenko, a 29 year old central defender, was also formed in the Midtjylland academy and sold to Scottish champions Celtic Glasgow, in 2016, for 2,5 million, returning two years later at half-price to lead the squad in their most recent run of success under Brian Priske.
Himself a former central defender, with a very reasonable playing career, that allowed him to collect 23 caps for Denmark and took him to Portsmouth FC, RKC Genk or Club Brugges, in England and Belgium, Priske focused the team on better defending when he took over from Kenneth Andersen, in August 2019. The club had failed to qualify for the Europa League group phase, losing the spot to Scottish team Rangers and letting in seven goals on aggregate. It was too much for Andersen, who had himself replaced Jess Thorup one year before and lost the League. Priske was one of Andersen’s assistants and led the team to an undisputed Danish title, mathematically guaranteed four rounds before the end, when FC Midtjylland beat the reigning champions FC København 3-1 at home and increased the gap between the two teams to 17 points with just 12 to be played.
The Wolves let in only 29 goals in the Superligaen’s 36 games, a considerable distance from FC København’s 42 and AGF Aahrus’ 41, mostly due to the solidity of their central structure. Alongside Sviatchenko and the core of the defense, Priske has the excellent Alexander Scholz, probably the most influential player in the last two seasons at the Superligaen, after coming in from Club Bruges, in 2018. Apart from always looking comfortable on the ball, Scholz has an excellent passing rate (89,2% in the current championship) and leads the League table for most duels won, with 72,6%.
But much of the team’s solidity also has to do with the midfield, formed by two very young players: 21 years old Swedish Jens Cajuste and 23 years old Nigerian Ogochukwu Onyeka. Both are full internationals with their countries – even if Onyeka is at FC Midjylland since his 17th birthday – and provide the necessary cover for the team to attack in a 4x2x3x1 formation that benefits from mobility and power of their forwards. Sisto is one of them, the others being 22 years old winger Anders Dreyer – the team’s best goalscorer this season, with eight goals in all competitions – and 25 years old Guinean striker Sory Kaba, who is on seven goals until now.
FC Midtjylland decided to reduce their squad in the January transfer window, as there will be less game frequency and, hence, less rotation, so they sent some young players on loan and brought in only two: goalkeeper Lössl and Brazilian defender Ailton, whom was at Qarabaq, in Azerbaijan, on loan from VfB Stuttgart, and is supposed to fight for the left back spot with Paulinho, yet another Brazilian. Much more concentrated in the domestic scene, after getting a couple of draws in their last two Champions League games – against Atalanta and Liverpool FC –, FC Midtjylland are seen as favorites to win the League, even because several of their players and hoping to make the cut into Kasper Hjulmand’s Danish 23 men squad that will play Euro’2020. But they are not alone in that fight.
Lindstrøm leads the challenge
FC København, champions in 2016, 2017 and 2019, seem to have lowered their standards and are only sixth, seven points from the top. They are not out of the fight, but the main challenge to the back-to-back titles from the wolves comes from Brøndby IF, who got three second spots since being crowned champions for the last time, in 2005. The team from the suburbs of the capital has the best attack of the Superligaen, thanks to the partnership between the attacking midfielder Jasper Lindstrøm and striker Mikael Uhre, both very influential in the former Under21 national team boss Niels Frederiksen’s 3x5x2 formation. Uhre, who at 1,88m is a strong and physical forward, has a footballing mind that provides him with the capacity to move in the right direction most of the times. He has the highest xG (expected goals) index of the whole League and, even if he only scored seven, one behing the best goalscorers in the competition, he also provided his colleagues with four assists.
The main talking point of this year’s Superligaen, anyway, is 20 year old midfielder Jasper Lindstrøm, probably destined to be the next big export of Danish football.
With eight goals and four assists in the 13 games that completed the Autumn phase of the League, Lindstrøm’s runs through the middle ensured he was elected Player of the Month in November and Young Player of the Month in all the other occasions. Formed by the club’s academy, he is already a Danish full international and also a huge prospect to make Denmark’s squad for the next European Championships. International portal Transfermarkt rates him at six million euros and before the closure of the January transfer window there were several rumours linking him with foreign clubs and even with FC København, who could look at him in the attempt to salvage this season. “I am a Brøndby man. I was born and raised in Brøndby, so that wouldn’t be good neither for me nor for my family”, he laughed, before claiming that all his focus is on the championship race. “The Spring season awaits, with a lot of matches. There is a long way to go. We must show that we can keep up, but our hope and our belief is that we can do it”, the youngster added. And not even the power of FC Midtjylland frightens him. “Everybody is talking about FC Midtjylland, but we already showed that we can be at the same standards as them. We should have won the first match against them”, he remembered. That game provided the second of three successive Brøndby IF defeats, on October and November: they lost 2-3 after being 2-0 up, the decision coming via an injury-time own goal by goalkeeper Schwabe, when Brøndby IF was already reduced to ten men, Norwegian central defender Sigurd Rosted seeing two yellow cards. Since then, they only lost one more game and are anxious to get to the playoffs. “There, we will only have top matches”, Lindstrøm concluded.
FC Midtjylland and Brøndby IF restart their campaigns in the Danish Superligaen tomorrow, the defending champions at home to Sonderjyske (18h CET) and the challengers away to FC Nordsjaelland (20h CET).