A Danish Everton fan is looking forward to attending a game at Hill Dickinson Stadium for the first time after winning fantasy football in his first season but admits he regrets handing Blues skipper James Tarkowski his own team’s captain’s armband early on in his triumphant campaign.
Over the years, Everton have had something of a quirky relationship when it comes to Denmark.
The links began in 1966 when Harry Catterick’s side faced Aalborg in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup. Not only are they first in the alphabet when it comes to all of Everton’s opponents but they remain the only Danish club that the Blues have faced in competitive action.
Then in 1979, Hafnia became Everton’s first shirt sponsors. The Latin word for Denmark’s capital city Copenhagen, this Hafnia were actually a Danish cooked meat company selling products like corned beef; pork roll; jellied veal and ox tongue but given they never embarked on a major assault on the UK retail market their choice to emblazon their logo on the Blues’ jerseys was a curious one.
Fortunately for them, their association with Everton coincided with the most-successful period during the club’s history but following the end of their deal in 1985, Hafnia were dissolved soon after with the name being passed on to Tyson Foods.
Thomas ‘Mad Dog’ Gravesen remains by far the most successful Danish player with the Blues, being sold to Real Madrid in January 2005. However, his compatriots enjoyed far less joy at Goodison Park.
Per Kroldrup was the centre-half who supposedly struggled to head the ball, snapped up for big money by David Moyes after Everton qualified for the Champions League. Team-mate Leon Osman recalled: “On his very first day of training, the gaffer took him to one side and started doing heading practice with him, like you would with a seven-year-old. It was a case of holding the ball, saying: ‘Are you ready? One, two, three – jump.’”
Jesper Lindstrom was the on-loan Napoli winger who played 29 games for the Blues in the 2024/25 season but failed to score; understudy right-back Lars Jacobsen made just half a dozen appearances in his solitary campaign but ended up coming on as a half-time substitute in the 2009 FA Cup final when Tony Hibbert wilted in the Wembley heat against Chelsea; Claus Thomsen and Peter Degn both underwhelmed while goalkeeper Jonas Lossl never even got on the pitch.
At least 23-year-old medical student Erik Ibsen is now associating Everton with winning ways once again, having been crowned the Fantasy Premier League (FPL) champion in his first season playing the game. FPL is the UK’s most popular fantasy league and claims to have more than 11 million players taking part. Users face a £100 million budget as they select squads of 15 footballers, who each earn points based on their weekly on-pitch performance. Ibsen was 21 points ahead going into the final day of the season, but ended up winning by 38 points thanks to a 14-point haul from his captain, and Manchester United skipper, Bruno Fernandes.
Ibsen only started playing because his sister was doing a work league and wanted some help, which turned into him picking his own team “for sibling rivalry.” He told BBC Newsbeat, going on to then beat millions of others to the title is “completely insane,” and said: “If you had told me at the start of the season I’d even be close I would have thought it's a joke.
“I don’t know how to put it into words. Of course there’s been some luck involved but I have also put time into it and it’s taken a lot of my energy.
“I don’t really have any education in football, all my analysis and statistical understanding is based off of my own education.
“I think I was sitting with it four or five hours a day in the last week. I have an exam in three weeks and I haven’t even started studying for it.”
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Ibsen admits the amount of FPL content he consumed “grew more and more” as the season went on but says he resisted the temptation to turn to artificial intelligence for help. Revealing he had “not normal” captaincy choices early on, including defenders James Tarkowski and Marc Guéhi, as well as goalkeeper David Raya, he said: “I think people can look back at my first few weeks and see this guy didn’t use AI.
“For example, like when Manchester City and Arsenal were playing the last game, they were still rated as the best players to buy, even though they had nothing to play for, whereas I was quite critical of that.”