Lars Dahl Elstrup (born 24 March 1963) is a Danish former professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...

, who played as a forward for a number of Danish clubs, as well as Dutch club

Feyenoord Feyenoord Rotterdam () is a Netherlands, Dutch professional association football, football club based in Rotterdam, which plays in the Eredivisie, the top tier in Dutch football league system, Dutch football. Founded as Wilhelmina in 1908, the ...

and English club

Luton Town Luton Town Football Club is a professional association football, football club from Luton, Bedfordshire, England. The club currently competes in EFL League One, the third level of the English football league system. Nicknamed "The Hatters", L ...

. He played 34 matches and scored 13 goals for the Denmark national team, and was part of the Denmark team which won the 1992 European Championship.

Club career

Born in the village of Råby, 20 km NE of

Randers Randers () is a city in Randers Municipality, Central Denmark Region on the Jutland peninsula. It is List of cities and towns in Denmark, Denmark's sixth-largest city, with a population of 64,511 ().Randers Sportsklub Freja Randers Sportsklub Freja (often abbreviated Randers Freja) is a Danish sport club with teams in athletics, handball, table tennis and football. History Randers Freja was founded in 1898, and was accepted into the JBU in 1907. The football ...

in 1982. Over the next four seasons, he became a proven goalscorer in Danish football's mostly 2nd highest divisions, and before the 1986 season Elstrup moved to the defending champions

Brøndby IF Brøndbyernes Idrætsforening (, usually abbreviated to Brøndby IF (), is a Danish professional Football club (association football), football club based in Brøndbyvester. Brøndby IF denotes the professional football section of Brøndbyernes ...

. He played just seven league games for Brøndby, scoring twice, before he moved abroad to play for Dutch club

. He played there for two years, but only scored nine goals for the

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

outfit. In 1988, Elstrup moved back to Denmark to play for

Odense BK Odense Boldklub (; also known as Odense BK or the more commonly used OB) is a Danish professional football club based in the city of Odense, in southern Denmark. The club has won three Danish championships and five Danish Cup trophies. OB play ...

. He scored 14 goals in 16 games in his first season at Odense, and was called up for the Denmark national team by national manager

Sepp Piontek Josef Emanuel Hubertus "Sepp" Piontek (born 5 March 1940) is a German former football player and manager. Playing career Born in Wrocław during World War II, Piontek started his playing career with VfL Germania Leer. Between 1963 and 1972, the ...

. The

1989 Danish 1st Division The 1989 Danish 1st Division season was the 44th season of the Danish 1st Division league championship, governed by the Danish Football Association. The Danish champions qualified for the European Cup 1990-91 qualification, while the second an ...

saw Elstrup score three times in 12 league games, before he left to try his hand at

English football Football is the most popular sport in England. Widely regarded as the birthplace of modern football, the first official rules of the game were established in England in 1863. The country is home to the world's first football league, the oldest ...

. Elstrup signed for English First Division club

on 21 August 1989 in a £850,000 transfer deal, setting a club transfer record. Playing at

Kenilworth Road Kenilworth Road, known affectionately as The Kenny, is a association football, football stadium in the area of Bury Park, Luton, Bedfordshire, England. It has been the home ground of Luton Town F.C., Luton Town Football Club since 1905. The sta ...

for two seasons, he soon settled and scored a total of 18 goals to keep Luton up in 1990–91. After only two years in England, Elstrup moved back to Denmark to rejoin Odense. Odense only paid £200,000, despite having sold him to Luton only two years before for more than four times that amount, and having attained an impressive goalscoring record at the English club, as well as still being in his twenties. Sure enough, after selling Elstrup, Luton were relegated. He played two more seasons for Odense, scoring 24 goals, before retiring in strange circumstances. These strange circumstances were due to damage to body and mind, quote Lars Elstrup himself.

International career

Elstrup made his national team debut in August 1988 against

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

, and scored both goals in a 2–1 victory. Elstrup was part of the Denmark squad for the 1992 European Championship. He played in two matches at the tournament, and scored the winning goal in the 2–1 win against

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

in the group stages. He also scored one of Denmark's five penalties in the semi-final

penalty shootout The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...

against

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, though he was an unused substitute, as Denmark beat

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

2–0 in the final.

Personal life

In 1993, Elstrup had doubts about his footballing future, as he felt he was living under the expectations of others.Pierre Collignon, "Hvor blev de af: Lars Elstrup: Frigørelsen", ''

Jyllands-Posten (; English: ''The Morning Newspaper "The Jutland Post"''), commonly shortened to or ''JP'', is a Danish daily broadsheet newspaper. It is based in Aarhus C, Jutland, and with a weekday circulation of approximately 120,000 copies.sect A sect is a subgroup of a religion, religious, politics, political, or philosophy, philosophical belief system, typically emerging as an offshoot of a larger organization. Originally, the term referred specifically to religious groups that had s ...

, and took the spiritual name "Darando", meaning "The River that Flows into the Sea". He moved away from the sect in December 1999 after being arrested for punching a school child. In January 2000, Odense gave Elstrup a chance to re-enter professional football by giving him a trial, but he left the club soon after when the club refused to pay him during the trial.Kim Mikkelsen, "Storm står fast: Elstrup færdig i OB", '' B.T. article'', 26 January 2000 He now lives in

Odense Odense ( , , ) is the third largest city in Denmark (after Copenhagen and Aarhus) and the largest city on the island of Funen. As of 1 January 2025, the city proper had a population of 185,480 while Odense Municipality had a population of 210, ...

, and stays out of the public eye.

Honours

Odense BK *

Danish 1st Division The 1st Division (''1. Division'') is the second-highest football league in Denmark, also known as NordicBet Liga for sponsorship reasons. From 1945 to 1991, the 1. Division was the name of the highest level of football in Denmark. With the for ...

1989 1989 was a turning point in political history with the "Revolutions of 1989" which ended communism in Eastern Bloc of Europe, starting in Poland and Hungary, with experiments in power-sharing coming to a head with the opening of the Berlin W ...

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

: 1993 Denmark *

UEFA European Championship The UEFA European Football Championship, less formally the European Championship and informally the Euro or Euros, is the primary association football tournament organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The competition ...

1992 1992 was designated as International Space Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 – Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt replaces Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru as United Nations Secretary-General. * January 6 ** The Republ ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Elstrup, Lars 1963 births Living people Danish men's footballers Randers FC players Brøndby IF players Feyenoord players Odense Boldklub players Luton Town F.C. players Eredivisie players English Football League players Danish Superliga players Denmark men's international footballers UEFA Euro 1992 players UEFA European Championship–winning players Danish expatriate men's footballers Expatriate men's footballers in the Netherlands Danish expatriate sportspeople in the Netherlands Expatriate men's footballers in England Danish expatriate sportspeople in England Men's association football forwards People from Randers Municipality Footballers from the Central Denmark Region 20th-century Danish sportsmen