In 1976, Henning Jensen from Nørresundby became the first Dane ever to pull on the white Real Madrid shirt, and upon his death in 2017, he was honored by 73,323 spectators with a minute’s silence at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu before the Champions League match against Borussia Dortmund .
Here, the home team’s players wore mourning bands to honor the North Jutland legend.
In the brand new biography “Henning Jensen – Helt i hvitt”, journalist Niels Idskov unfolds the life story of one of our greatest footballers.
Blue book for Henning Jensen
- Born: 17 August 1949 in Nørresundby
- Died: 4 December 2017 (age 68)
- Football career:
- Until 1972: Nørresundby
- 1972-1976: Borussia Mönchengladbach
- 1976-1979: Real Madrid
- 1979-1981: Ajax
- 1981-1983: AGF
- 1984: Nørresundby
- International matches: 21 matches, 9 goals
Below you can read a chapter from the book, published by the publisher Turbine.
We enter the spring of 1972, where Henning Jensen is still running around on Nørresundby’s team in the fourth best row.
Nevertheless, he is selected for the national team.
Beautiful Henning and a hopeless team
The best domestic players are continuously bought up by foreign clubs, and in addition, the national confidence around the national football team is eroded year after year. It is not great in the early 70s, and that also applies to the hope of qualifying for the 1972 Olympics. ‘A hopeless team’ is what large parts of the press call the group of domestic amateurs that national coach Rudi Strittich works with.
Not least in the attack, there are regular substitutions, and suddenly it’s Henning Jensen’s turn. A man of confidence, he says he finds the preparations for the decisive second leg in Romania on May 3 quite good. Even if, for example, it is the first time that he will play in the front together with Peter Johansson from Slagelse.
Nordjyden, with just one international match behind it, is alone in its optimism. For BT, 10 of the 11 Danish players are tipping either a draw 0-0 or 1-1. The exception is Henning Jensen, who is going after a Danish 2-1 victory.
“As usual, I lived in Bucharest together with Kristen Nygaard from Fuglebakken in Aarhus, and we had a lot to talk about. I rarely think that a Danish team has been as well-timed for a task as we have”, says Henning Jensen in Mål.
With a 2-1 victory behind them from the first meeting in Copenhagen with the Romanian national team in the autumn of 1971, there are also small Danish hopes from the first whistle in Bucharest. Although the road to the home victory was not least over a clumsy Romanian own goal.
2024-10-23 03:52:00
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