WHAT do you need to be a genuine maverick? Oodles of charisma? Yep. Talent on the pitch? That’s a given. A penchant for mischief off it? Almost certainly.
In that respect, heavy-smoker Preben Elkjaer ticked all the boxes.
Blue-eyed and red-blooded, Elkjaer was one of the stars of the Danish national side that impressed at the 1984 European Championships and the 1986 World Cup Finals and forged a formidable strike partnership with Michael Laudrup.
He would end his international career with 38 goals in 69 caps. He also enjoyed a distinguished career in club football, most notably for Lokeren in Belgium and with Hellas Verona in Italy where he won the Serie A title in 1984/85.
He was a stickler for detail…
As a 19-year-old playing for FC Cologne, Elkjaer was hauled over the coals by his coach Hennes Weisweiler when he was spotted out on the town in the wee small hours.
“One day, the manager said I’d left a nightclub at 3am with two girls and a bottle of vodka,” he recalled.
“I told him, ‘That’s not true’. He said, ‘Oh yes it is, one of my friends saw you’.
I said, ‘OK, but it was whisky, not vodka.’”
BUT THEN HE WAS ALWAYS IN TROUBLE
If Denmark’s coach, the German Sepp Piontek, wasn’t reprimanding Elkjaer for smoking behind the team bus, he was handing out fines to the player like they were lemon sherbets.
One of Piontek’s rules was fining those players that returned to the team hotel after 1am on a night out. That is to say, Preben Elkjaer.
To his credit, Elkjaer always took any sanction with good grace and, once, he even settled his fine in advance.
“I had the money in my pocket and thought, ‘I better give him it now, because in two hours I won’t have any.’”
HIS TALENT OUTWEIGHED HIS TROUBLEMAKING
Not only did Elkjaer top-score with eight goals in Denmark’s qualifying campaign for the 1986 World Cup but he also scored four in the Finals in Mexico too.
Drawn in a group with Scotland, Uruguay and West Germany, the Danes won all three of their games to top their group with Elkjaer scoring the only goal against Scotland and also bagging a hat-trick in the 6-1 win over Uruguay.
But despite establishing themselves as one of the tournament favourites, Elkjaer and Denmark crashed out to Spain in the round of 16, going down 5-1 with Emilio ‘The Vulture’ Butragueno scoring four.
Elkjaer did, however, pick up the Bronze Ball Award as the tournament’s third best player.
HE PICKED A FIGHT WITH ROYALTY
After their exploits in qualifying for their first World Cup Finals in 1986, Denmark were lauded by the public back home but, unlike other sports stars who had tasted success, they weren’t invited to meet the country’s royal family.
And Elkjaer wasn’t best pleased.
“There was no tradition in the royal household for football, yet the rest of the country was in love with us,” he said.
So he wrote to the royals demanding a reception. And they took notice.
“I honestly thought, “They won’t listen to me”. I was wrong. When we went to the castle, the two young princes were crazy about us, and they still are.”
HE’S A LEGEND IN VERONA
Eljkaer arrived at Hellas Verona in the summer of 1984, just as Diego Maradona turned up 450 miles south in Naples.
While all the attention was on the Argentine superstar, it was Elkjaer that really set about shaking up Serie A.
In his first season, the Danish striker propelled the minnows to the very pinnacle of Italian football as Verona took their one and only scudetto, winning by four points from Torino.
Fittingly, he also scored the goal that took them to the title in the penultimate game against Atalanta.
That year, Elkjaer also finished second in the Ballon d’Or, behind Juve’s French playmaker Michel Platini. He was at the peak of his powers.
I had the money in my pocket and thought, ‘I better give him it now, because in two hours I won’t have any.’”
Eljkaer on settling a fine with manager Sepp Piontek before breaking team curfew and heading out
AND THEY STILL LOVE HIM THERE…
They elect a new mayor in Verona every five years.
And while Preben Elkjaer’s name is never on the ballot paper there are always hundreds of spoiled votes, simply because people have scrawled the player they called Il Sindaco (the Mayor) all over them.
HE WAS SO GOOD HE DIDN’T NEED BOOTS
Shortly after moving to Hellas Verona, Elkjaer lined up to face Juventus.
He had a stormer too, scoring in a 2-0 home win over The Old Lady.
And what a goal it was. Picking up the ball on the left wing, Elkjaer lost his boot as he outstripped his marker but continued his run into the box, cutting back on to his bootless right foot and lashing the ball home.
HE LIKED A PRACTICAL JOKE
Before a game against Romania, Danish coach and renowned technophobe Sepp Piontek was struggling to set up a tactics video to show the team so Elkjaer offered his services. Bad idea.
“He had his back to the screen,” recalls Elkjaer.
“I swapped the video for an adult film. He started shouting, ‘Why are you all laughing? This is very serious!’
“He told us, ‘Hey guys, stop joking all the time, you can play. You have talent’.”
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ELJKAER BECAME A COLUMNIST
As one of Denmark’s favourite sons, Elkjaer was a man in demand and was approached by one publisher to write a column in, er, a gentleman’s magazine.
He jumped at the chance, but was at pains to point out that it wasn’t a pornographic title.
“No, it was not porn,’” he insists. “It had pictures of some naked women, yes, but not porn.”
https://textbacklinkexchanges.com/denmark-legend-preben-eljkaer-loved-nightclubs-whisky-girls-once-put-on-a-porn-film-during-a-team-meeting/
News Photo Denmark legend Preben Eljkaer loved nightclubs, whisky & girls & once put on a porn film during a team meeting
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