Michael Schäfer (born 25 January 1959) is a Danish former

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

player and now manager. In his active career as a

midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

, he played 482 games for Danish club

Lyngby BK Lyngby Boldklub () is a Danish professional football club founded in 1921. It is based at Lyngby Stadion in Kongens Lyngby, Lyngby-Taarbæk Municipality, a northern suburb of Copenhagen. From 1994 to 2001 the club was known as Lyngby FC. The clu ...

, as well as three games for the

Denmark national football team The Denmark men's national football team ( da, Danmarks herre-fodboldlandshold or ''herrelandsholdet'') represents Denmark in men's international football competitions. It is controlled by the Danish Football Association (DBU), the governing bo ...

. At the moment he is a teacher at Virum Skole in Denmark.

Biography

Born in

Rødovre Rødovre is a town in eastern Denmark, seat of the Rødovre Municipality, in the Region Hovedstaden. The town's population 1 January 2019 was 39,907, and in addition 145 persons had no fixed address, which made up a total of 40,052 in the municip ...

in eastern

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, Schäfer started playing football with local club

BK Avarta Boldklubben Avarta is a Danish football club currently playing in the Danish 2nd Division Group 1, which ranks as the third highest league in Denmark. Avarta's home ground is Espelundens Idrætsanlæg in Rødovre, Copenhagen, which has a capaci ...

. He moved on to

, where he played for more than a decade, including the entire decade of the 1980s. He was called up for the Danish national team in July 1980, by national manager

Sepp Piontek Josef Emanuel Hubertus "Sepp" Piontek (born 5 March 1940) is a German former footballer and manager. Playing career Born in Breslau, now Wrocław. Piontek started his playing career with VfL Germania Leer. Between 1963 and 1972, the full-back ...

. In his three years in the national team, Schäfer was a bit-part player and played three national team matches. He was a part of the Lyngby team that won the first major trophy in club history; the 1983 Danish championship. He also won the 1984 and 1985

Danish Cup The Danish Cup ( da, Landspokalturneringen; often referred to as Pokalen) is the official "knockout" cup competition in Danish football, run by the Danish Football Association. The cup has been contested annually since 1955. The winner will quali ...

trophies with the club. As Lyngby team captain, he captained the team to the 1990 Danish Cup title as well. Having played 482 matches for Lyngby BK, he retired in the fall 1990, 32 years old. He then went on to be a manager. He started as an assistant coach for Lyngby BK in January 1991, but was promoted to head coach in September 1992, following the departure of Swedish coach

Kent Karlsson Kent Karlsson (born 25 November 1945) is a Swedish football coach and former player. He was capped 38 times for the national team and played at the 1974 FIFA World Cup. As a manager, he has managed Swedish, Danish and Norwegian clubs such as IFK ...

. In 1995, he became the new manager of

F.C. Copenhagen Football Club Copenhagen ( da, Football Club København, ), commonly known as FC København, FC Copenhagen, Copenhagen or simply FCK, is a professional Danish football club in Copenhagen, Denmark. FCK was founded in 1992 as a superstructure on ...

, but he was fired after only one season because of poor results. Since then he has been the manager of several clubs in the lower divisions, among them his former club

. He is also a football commentator for Danish TV3.

Honours

* Danish championship: 1983 *

: 1984, 1985 and 1990

References

External links

* 1959 births Living people Sportspeople from Rødovre Men's association football midfielders Danish men's footballers Denmark men's under-21 international footballers Denmark men's international footballers Danish football managers Lyngby Boldklub managers F.C. Copenhagen managers Ølstykke FC managers Boldklubben af 1893 managers Fremad Amager managers Boldklubben Avarta managers {{Denmark-footy-bio-stub