Frandsen returns to the north of France with Denmark

11.06.98 17h08 CET

Per FRANDSEN (8) is a rare commodity in the DENMARK (Group C) team: the Bolton Wanderers (ENGLAND) midfielder speaks French. Three years with Lille OSC have helped, even if the final season was spent on the bench. When he returned to the north of FRANCE for his team's first match against SAUDI ARABIA in LENS on Friday, the memories came flooding back. "I don't have any regrets; I spent three good seasons with Lille, even though I was a substitute during the my final year there. It's always difficult to accept when you're not playing, it's hard, but that's life…" The fair-haired Dane has made up for it since. After a detour via FC Copenhagen, the club with which he began his career, he arrived at Bolton Wanderers. As things turned out, they were relegated at the end of the season to the second division, "for the sake of a point or two", but there was a positive side to it: it was his move to England which secured his place in the national team. "I had been picked twice while I was at Copenhagen, but everything came good at Bolton. I had an excellent season, the best of my professional career."

The player has adapted so well to ENGLAND that he has decided to stay there next season. Not disoriented by the weather, he has become used to the country: "The English are great. We play before capacity crowds, it's fantastic. I've adapted to it without any problems, and the British way of playing the game is much like the Danish style. It's very fast, and it suits me down to the ground."

With a smile on his face, Per FRANDSEN is approaching his first World Cup, at the age of 28, match by match: "We're going to try to win our first game, which is always important. We are simply going to play our own game in order to beat SAUDI ARABIA, who I don't know much about. After that, we hope to reach the quarter finals. We're no longer the revelation we were at the European championship in 1992, but we have a good team nonetheless. We played well in our qualifying matches. FRANCE is the most dangerous opponent in our group. It's going to be very difficult, but we've already beaten them once. It was a friendly game, but for us, an international match is never completely friendly…"