Danish football players and FC Barcelona

Yesterday I was having breakfast and suddenly I saw a paper on the table with the names of all the Turkish football players that had player in Real Madrid in any moment of its history. That had me think about how many Danish football players has played with Barça along their more than 100 years of history. I only remembered two, but actually they were four. Can you recognized them?

Michael Laudrup, with Koeman, after winning
the European Cup, in 1992.
 

Thomas Christiansen

Allan Simonsen

Ronnie Kedelund

The first Danish player to play with F.C. Barcelona was Allan Simonsen, from 1979 to 1983. Simonsen was a fantastic winger and have the honor of being the first Danish player to win the Ballon D’Or. It was in 1977 and he won ahead Kevin Keegan and Michel Platini. He signed up with Barça in 1979, after some good seasons in Borussia Mönchengladbach. Although he never won “La liga” he is well-remembered by Barcelona supporters. He only won one “Copa del Rey” (1981) and one “Copa de la Liga” (1982) with Barcelona, as well as, one “Recopa de Europa”, where Barça beat Standard de Lieja 2-1 with one goal scored by Simonsen. On the summer of 1982 he left Barça because Barça bought Maradona and the argentinian player occupied his stranger place.

In that video you can see a resume of the Recopa de Europa final "FC Barcelona-Standard de Lieja", 

played in 1982. Simonsen scored a goal and gave an assist to Quini, who scored the second goal. 

Michael Laudrup was the second Danish player who wore Barcelona’s shirt. Before playing with Barça, Laudrup had played with Brøndby, Lazio and Juventus. So when he signed up with F.C. Barcelona in the summer of 1989 he was already a recognized football player. In Barcelona, Laudrup took part of one of the best teams in the history of football: The Dream Team, trained by Johan Cruyff. The Dream Team won a lot of tittles, like “La Liga” (1991-1994), “La Copa del Rey” (1990) or “Supercopa de España” (1991 and 1992); but the most remembered title he won was the European Cup, in 1991. It is the first European Cup in Barça’s history. Unfortunately, the life of that team finished in the final of European Cup against Milan FC, in 1994, where Barcelona lost 4-0. We remember Laudrup because of his assists, his famous feint called “croqueta” and because of his fantastic don’t look-passes.

In that video you can see a collection of Laudrup's passes. 

The third Danish player who played with Barcelona was Ronnie Ekelund. He played with Barça from 1992 to 1994, and, without a doubt, he is the worst of the four players and he is not much remembered by Barça fans. Ekelund was a forward that Barça bought from Brondby, where he made his debut with 15 years. Cruyff signed Ekelund after the Barcelona Olympic Games, in 1992, but he only played 33 minutes with Barcelona, against Racing de Santander (19^th March, 1994). That year Barcelona won “La Liga”.  It’s curious to know that in 1996 he signed up with Odense, the town where I’m leaving.

Ekelund goal and his later celebration was chosen like the 50 best moment on MLS cup.

The last Danish who has played with Barcelona until now is Thomas Christiansen, who played from 1992 to 1994. Christiansen was born in Copenhaguen to a Spanish mother, that’s why he played with sub-15 spanish national team and he played 2 times with the absolute Spanish national team. The Spanish national coach, Javier Clemente, called Thomas Christiansen to play with Spain, first, against Mexico, in 1993, and later, against Lithuania, where Spain won 5-0 and Christiansen scored one goal.

He began to play with FC Barcelona B in the season 1991-1992 and the thanks to the excellent games he did, he was called to play with Spain National team in 1993.  Unfortunately he never played any game with Barcelona first team, and he was loaned to Sporting de Gijón (February 1993); Osasuna (1993-1994) and Racing de Santander (1994-1995).  It’s curious to know that Christiansen played with Terrassa, another catalan team, on 1999. Nowadays, he is playing with FC Barcelona veteran team and her name has sound to be the second coach of Pep Guardiola in Bayern München.

Christiansen was interviewed by "Pere Escobar", a catalan journalist, on September 2012. 

You can listen some of her opinions and a brief review of her football career here. 

You can find more information about these football players here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Simonsen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Laudrup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Ekelund
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Christiansen

And, of course, you can find more information about F.C. Barcelona it these pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Barcelona
http://www.fcbarcelona.com/