Mikkel Damsgaard is one of the talents who is putting himself in the spotlight at Euro 2020. He is owned by Sampdoria, who found him among the ranks of Nordsjaelland of Denmark, a renowned forge of scouting and talents.
Mikkel made his professional debut on 27 September 2017, aged just 17, providing an assist in the Danish Cup game against Vejgaard.
On March 4, 2018, he made his first career goal, in the away win against Randers and, on July 10, he signed a four-year contract with the team, being definitively included in the first-team squad.
Damsgaard got used to professional football fairly quickly, although he encountered normal difficulties at first. “I don’t know if the level surprised me, but it was hard to get used to. The intensity is incredibly high and you have to be constantly 100% focused,” he said.
He started playing football in Jyllinge (his hometown), where he stayed for eight years, also having his father as a coach. During a Jyllinge match, Damsgaard was spotted by a Nordsjælland scout, who was watching another player, but eventually ended up contacting him. In Nordsjælland he immediately joined the U-12 team, where he immediately highlighted his good basic technical quality.
This is how Mikkel Damsgaard remembers his first steps in the world of football: “Jyllinge was a great club to spend my childhood in and it was great to see how the team evolved while I was there. It was there that I learned to play football.“
When he was discovered in Jyllinge, Damsgaard was playing in midfield and had freedom of action across the pitch. He also continued to play in that role at Nordsjælland until the U-17 coach tested him in the attack – a new role in which Mikkel immediately proved to be at ease.
“I’ve always played in midfield so it was new enough for me to be a forward. Kasper Wheelman wanted me to play like a ‘false nine’ and I really liked the new position. There I had the opportunity to step back onto the pitch and receive the ball on the frontline,” he said.
At the end of the season, he won the award for Best Young Player of the Danish Superliga. The eyes of the Premier and Bundesliga team staffs focused on him, but it was too late: Sampdoria had moved early and had already blocked the boy with an offer of 6.5M euros in January 2020.
Role and Characteristics of Mikkel Damsgaard
The class of 2000 began his career as a midfielder and is still often employed in that department, especially as a left midfielder. Over time, however, he has been able to reinvent himself and make tactical flexibility an effective feature of him. From the Nordsjaelland U-17 onwards, Damsgaard has also frequently played as an attacking winger in a 4-3-3 or even as a forward, or perhaps more accurately as a “false nine.”
The 20-year-old Dane is gifted with excellent playing technique. He doesn’t talk much, and let his feet do it. He knows how to assert his outstanding associative skills, to which he adds – especially when playing as a midfielder – an aptitude for long throwing aimed at freeing his teammates. For this reason, one should not be surprised by his tactical evolution, which could bring him back to the nerve center of the field even as a midfielder.
In the future, by virtue of his technical-tactical maturity, it is not excluded that he may be deployed as a playmaker.
Right footed, he likes to play the ball by touching it a few times and often making low passes. As soon as he has a chance, he tries to verticalize the game, giving great depth to his team’s maneuver.
Moreover, he knows how to move with intelligence without the ball, especially in the offensive phase, going to position himself in the empty spaces well in advance. In the defensive phase, he knows how to move well in concert with his department but sometimes lacks competitive nastiness in interdiction.
Damsgaard knows how to kick idle balls very well and has good ball-to-foot acceleration, which allows him to elegantly jump over his opponents. He has decent speed over the long run, as well as medium strength in shots and headers.
His normotypical physique does not prevent him from “throwing himself” on his opponents if necessary, but his physical strength is probably his “Achilles heel” and so he needs to further strengthen his body structure to be more successful in contrast.
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