We’re a little over 12 hours away from Derek McInnes’ Kilmarnock side taking to the pitch at the Parken Stadium for the first leg of their Europa Conference League play-off against FC Copenhagen.
So, as part of our extensive coverage of the match, the Killie Chronicle spoke to Danish football expert Toke Theilade to bring you the lowdown on everything Killie should expect from Denmark’s biggest club.
Owner of VilfortPark.dk, Toke certainly knows a thing or two about Copenhagen’s strengths, the calibre of their players and how they’re shaping up ahead of Thursday night. A huge thank you to him for giving up his time to chat!
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What is the general mood surrounding FC Copenhagen right now?
They haven’t had the start to the season they’d have wanted. If you look at the results, they’ve been alright – they’re still unbeaten in the league and they advanced in the Conference League. But they are in a bit of a difficult situation. They’re going into their third season, if I’m not mistaken, with their head coach Jacob Neestrup, who is a former player. He won the league two years ago and obviously last season they went very far in the Champions Leagues, advancing from Manchester United’s group. At the same time, they finished third in the league, which is far from acceptable for Copenhagen. They have by far the biggest budget in Denmark, so anything but the European group stage and the championship every season is basically unacceptable. They lost their sporting director [Peter Christiansen] this summer, he moved to Wolfsburg in Germany. Their new sporting director [Sune Smith-Nielsen] is in his first big job and they’ve conducted a lot of transfers. They’ve switched lots around in the squad, but they haven’t played well yet this season.
We know they struggled to get past Banik Ostrava in the last round and then were booed after a 1-1 draw at the weekend. Is now a good time to play Copenhagen?
They were very lucky in Ostrava. If you’ve watched the highlights you would see that, especially in the penalty shootout where Ostrava’s penalties were some of the worst I’ve ever seen! The fans are currently a little bit unhappy. I wouldn’t say the coach is under pressure because he’s very popular, but generally, there is a feeling they should be getting a lot more out of these players. They’re in a bit of a rebuilding phase as they aim to get back to the top of Danish football. They’ve brought home Thomas Delaney, a club legend, from Anderlecht, which is a huge signing for them and a huge signal to the rest of the league. He’s arguably the biggest star in the team and was with the national team at the Euros this summer. They’re not in the best shape and there really isn’t a better time to meet Copenhagen than right now because usually they always start the season a bit slow, but I think they’re not where they need to be. They do have muscle financially and tend to get going at some stage, though.
Will people in Denmark, Copenhagen specifically, know much about Kilmarnock?
I think they’ll have heard of them. British football is quite big here. It’s mostly the Premier League but there is also a lot of knowledge of the Scottish teams. It’s mainly Celtic and Rangers that people know about when it comes to Scottish football. I remember a few years ago Hibernian played in Denmark after they won the cup and played in the Europa League. There is a lot of respect for Scottish football, but at the same time, the fans definitely expect Copenhagen to qualify and see this, not as a walkover, but definitely as a manageable opponent.
*The rest of this interview is available on the Killie Chronicle*
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