Mikkel Damsgaard was only 18 when the then Nordsjaelland technical director Flemming Pedersen called him the biggest prospect of Denmark since Michael Laudrup.
It was demonstrably not useful to put so much pressure on a player who was still in his teenage years who had just ended his breakthrough season with the club.
Damsgaard itself took the pinch of salt. “I have a good relationship with him, but he sometimes says crazy things,” he remembered later. But prophecies such players set up players for a fall.
Hardly, even by the time he was 23, it seemed that Damsgaard might be the newest wonder kid who does not live up to invoicing. Even heavier it was nothing of his own do.
But four injury hit years since he lit the euro 2020, including scoring against England in the semi-final and becoming the youngest ever to score at a European championships, Damsgaard finally shows what made him the conversation of his country at such a young age.
Matching the talent of one of the greatest midfielders in history was and remains a long chance. But even competing with the best of the Premier League looked so unlikely in the division of his time since a surprise movement to Brentford in 2022.
Captain Christian Norgaard, who at a growing Danish contingent at a growing Danish contingent in the Gtech Community Stadium, including head coach Thomas Frank, Captain Christian Norgaard, is that during his last season in Sampdoria he had never been plagued by a reactive arthritis.
The bees hoped that it would improve, but in 2022/23 and 2023/24 he only made 16 competition -start, which produced two assists and no goals.
“You could say that I lost a bit of my spark,” he says Sky Sports. But it has certainly returned now. This season he has been a revelation. Not the first in Brentford colors, but one of the most contrasting. He is in second place in the assistants behind only Trent Alexander-Arnold.
His casual creation numbers place him under the will of Mo Salah, Cole Palmer and Bruno Fernandes. They are elite numbers and the bees have a gem. But without the patience to support the 24-year-old because of his more difficult times, they may never have happened.
“Many coaches would not give you that much time if Thomas Frank has with me,” he adds. “It is difficult to say exactly what would have happened, but I certainly appreciate the confidence to come back and act.
“He has shown a lot of faith in me and believed in me. He gave me those opportunities this season, and I certainly had to work for it and show that I was ready, but he continued to believe it completely.
“There are many periods in which he wanted more from me, and that helped me to build on what I had to do.”
This season, Damsgaard has already made 27 league -star, more than every campaign since 2019/20 with Nordsjaelland.
It has been one thing to get those minutes under his belt, but the way he was finally able to sparkle in the Premier League has been something completely different.
What would he have thought if he had told how the campaign would come out if he returned from the European Championships? “I thought it was a bit crazy,” he says.
“I hoped that I would get a lot more playing time, but to get 10 assists in the Premier League is much better than what I had thought.”
The way Damsgaard plays is, somewhat ironically, is always stressed on his body and this season has tested stress this season.
In addition to his creative spark, Damsgaard has won the third highest number of assets of the last third in an all-action role that fits his game to the ground.
He was once connected to some of the largest clubs in Europe and may have put them in a high alert this season with his injury problems that apparently lay behind him, but instead he committed his future to the bees by signing a new four -year -old deal earlier this season.
“You could say that there was an element to repay their faith,” he says. “It was a fairly easy decision for me, I am very happy here.
“I just wanted to continue with that and stay at this club that feels like home. Compared to other clubs, it is very nice here – we have a very good companion, of course there are still different groups and we sometimes speak Danish together. But the atmosphere is great.”
That atmosphere has long resonated on the field with the results of Brentford against the traditional Big Six, so that they all leave a bloody nose at some point. Arsenal has done better than some rivals since he lost in the very first Premier League match of Brentford in 2021 and has since won all meetings.
But because the Gunners have demonstrably larger priorities with a quarterfinals of the Champions League on both sides of Saturday's latest game between the two parties, Damsgaard thinks there is a chance to hit.
“They are clearly a difficult team, but they have two games on both sides of us against Real Madrid. Maybe they have a little focus on those games, but every team in the Premier League knows how difficult it is to win.
“You have to take your A-Game to win, even if you are Arsenal or Liverpool. If they don't bring it, we have a very good chance of winning the game. There is never a game that we think we can't win.”
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