Euro 2025: Denmark team guide – a side centered around goalscorer Pernille Harder

New York Times

5 hours ago

Denmark is among a select class of European nations whose women's national team have been involved in some of the most pivotal moments in the history of the game. That status earns them the right to seldom get counted out of a competition. Denmark's roots are too strong.
That said, time is waning for Denmark to break free of its current archetype as the mid-table team likely to manage OK against smaller nations and cause problems for the powerhouses.
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They have plenty of experience on the sport's biggest stages — four World Cup appearances, most recently advancing to the knockout stage in 2023, and 10 qualifications for the European Championship, where they were finalists in 2017 — but with an enduring lack of high-caliber players, the Danes appear to be in a state of determined seeking.
Still, this is a team with a high propensity to surprise, especially in a tournament structure.
Andree Jeglertz has been with the Denmark national team since their World Cup exit in 2023, joining them from Linkoping in the Damallsvenskan, the top division of women's football in Sweden. A Swede himself, Jeglertz has spent the majority of his managerial career in his homeland, most notably at Umea IK from 2004 to 2008, where he coached Brazilian forward Marta and won the 2003-04 UEFA Women's Cup (today's Champions League).
Jeglertz has gone 13-1-8 with the national team, marked by the high of a 2-0 victory over Germany in 2023 and the low of missing out on qualification for last year's Olympics. His contract is up at the conclusion of the tournament, and recent reports have linked the 52-year-old with the vacant head coach role at Manchester City Women.
With a goalscoring talisman such as Pernille Harder in the squad, it's neither a surprise nor a secret that Denmark has built its attack around her. The 32-year-old Bayern Munich attacker is still very much in form for club and country. If midfielders aren't slicing through opposition back lines with balls to Harder, they, and the team's other strikers, are exploiting the spaces left open by her gravitational pull and going directly at goal themselves.
Defensively, they seem most comfortable in a mid-block, willing to risk getting caught and exposed in the space behind to capitalise on their attacking threats.
Nobody has scored more goals for Denmark's women's side than Harder, and the 162 caps worth of experience she brings makes it difficult to imagine the team finding success without her involvement. Winner of the UEFA Women's Player of the Year award in 2018 and 2020, Harder is at her best and most terrifying when she has the ball at her feet and space to dribble, which she does at such a pace that she becomes exceedingly difficult to defend.
Signe Bruun will also be key to Denmark's European Championship challenge, her sturdy presence in midfield, with and without the ball, offering a potentially complementary dynamic with the quick-footed Josefine Hasbo.
Their attack. The Danes' technical tidiness on the ball makes for the kind of offensive movement that can be tough to defend if they string enough of those passes together. And with defenders such as Isabella Obaze, who has been sharpening her tools in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) with Portland Thorns, their back line should be able to handle physicality and direct play that much more.
If a team can contain Harder — and it's safe to assume this will be a top priority without even needing to view a scouting report — they could be in trouble without a suitable striker to step into her role and get balls into the back of the net. And while their midblock provides some defensive cover, a strong opponent won't have too much trouble overloading it or outrunning the back line with balls played in behind.
Though Sofie Svava may have been expected to claim a spot on Denmark's roster due to the prestige of her club resumé — the 24-year-old defender is currently at OL Lyonnes and has previously played for Real Madrid, Wolfsburg, Rosengard and Brondby — she was curiously left off.
Svava has been playing with Denmark in the Nations League recently, so it's possible her performances were outshone by the younger Obaze, who is 22, and her contribution of experience did not match up to 36-year-old Sanne Troelsgaard, both of whom did make the squad.
Denmark has played just nine games in the past year, which is partly down to not having made the Olympics. Six of those nine were against only three teams — Sweden, Italy and Wales, facing each twice in the Nations League. This hasn't offered much schedule diversity upon which to form a strong and accurate opinion, but beating Wales twice, splitting points with Italy and losing twice to Sweden (including a 6-1 demolition as recently as June 3) suggests this team has not regressed, but nor has it necessarily improved.
Last October, the Danes also secured a 5-0 win against South Africa and were defeated 2-1 by the Netherlands, reinforcing the previous point about their stasis.
Denmark and Sweden shared a group in the Nations League and do so again at the Euro 2025, giving the Danes plenty of homework heading into the latter event, where the teams face off in what is the opening fixture for both on July 4. Sweden and Germany may be the favorites to advance to the quarterfinals on paper, but rivals Denmark and Poland have shown just enough in recent competitions to pose veritable threats, making Group C as a whole the most wide open to a plot twist.
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All of these teams can shock each other, but Denmark will absolutely need to handle business against Poland in the teams' third and final first-phase game to stand a fighting chance against the giants in the group.
The Denmark women's national team encompasses Greenland, whose national teams are not recognised by FIFA.