Danish Heroes III - Michael Laudrup

/ Due to some blogger.com maintenance problems the former post disappeared into the matrix. Friday the 13th, I guess...

Michael Laudrup currently is doing a terrific job in the Spanish Primera División. At the start of the season, he took over as head coach of RCD Mallorca, stabilising a devastated club and team, and with the recent results it is more than likely that Mallorca is remaining in the Spanish top league.

Michael Laudrup. Portrait drawing: Pencil, A3.

Michael Laudrup is without any doubt the best football player ever to emerge from Denmark, an exceptional talent ranked amongst the best players in the history of the game. With his outstanding technique, his stunning overview and his creative approach to football my personal number 1.

Actually, he never received a red card in his whole career, always controlling and outmatching his antagonists by technical means, never by running them down. Like Di Stefano, Pele, Cruyff, Beckenbauer, Platini, Maradona, he defined and celebrated the play as a form of performance art.

I still remember his last match as active player, Denmark-Brazil in the quarter finals of the 1998 World Cup in France, as one of the most facinating football games I ever watched (in the small bar "Niagara" in Berlin-Kreuzberg). In the end Denmark lost 2:3, but the Danish team captained by Michael Laudrup was more than equal during the fight, probably even better. I recall that the Kreuzberg audience, traditionally always in favour of the Brazilians, was going over to the Danes with flying colours during the match,.
Well, in Kreuzberg you also traditionally are with the creative loosers, and the game might had caused a moralic conflict. I always loved the Danes.

After the match a sweating, smiling Michael Laudrup announced the end of his active career. Firm and in a very relaxed manner he adressed the cameras and microphones saying that this was one of the best matches of his career, if not the best, and that he felt honoured and priviledged to conclude his career with such an outstanding event.
No word about being defeated - and he wasn't. 

An inspiration if some day I should resign from my job as a Head of Studies. But then again, I need an outstanding performance and a matching event first.

Anyway, I love Jazz, I love football (yes, I do...).