Mikkel Damsgaard was only 18 when then-Nordsjaelland technical director Flemming Pedersen called him Denmark’s biggest prospect since Michael Laudrup.

It arguably wasn’t helpful to put so much pressure on a player still in his teens who had only just finished his breakthrough season with the club.

Damsgaard himself took the pinch of salt. “I have a good relationship with him, but he sometimes says crazy things,” he later recalled. But prophecies like that set players up for a fall.

Saturday 12th April 5:00pm


Kick off 5:30pm

Harshly, even by the time he was 23, it seemed Damsgaard may be the latest wonderkid to fail to live up to the billing. Even more harshly, it was nothing of his own doing.

But four injury-hit years since he lit up Euro 2020, including scoring against England in the semi-final and becoming the youngest ever Dane to score at a European Championships, Damsgaard is finally showing what made him the talk of his country at such a young age.

Matching the talent of one of history’s greatest midfielders was and remains a long shot. But even competing with the Premier League’s best looked just as unlikely for much of his time in the division since a surprise move to Brentford in 2022.

Joining a growing Danish contingent at the Gtech Community Stadium including head coach Thomas Frank, captain Christian Norgaard, Damsgaard’s move may have never come about had he not already been plagued by injury problems during his final season in Sampdoria owing to a reactive arthritis diagnosis.

The Bees hoped things would improve but across 2022/23 and 2023/24 he made only 16 league starts, producing two assists and no goals.

“You could say I lost a little bit of my spark,” he tells Sky Sports. But it has certainly returned now. This season, he has been a revelation. Not the first in Brentford colours, but among the most contrasting. He sits second in the assist charts behind only Trent Alexander-Arnold.

His chance creation numbers place him among the likes of Mo Salah, Cole Palmer and Bruno Fernandes. They are elite numbers, and the Bees have a gem on their hands. But without the patience to support the 24-year-old through his tougher times, they may never have happened.

“A lot of coaches wouldn’t give you as much time as Thomas Frank has with me,” he adds. “It’s hard to say exactly what would have happened but I definitely appreciate the confidence to come back in and perform.

“He has shown a lot of faith in me and believed in me. He’s given me those chances this season, and I’ve definitely had to work for it and show I was ready, but he kept believing all the way through.

“There’s a lot of periods where he wanted more from me, and that’s helped me build on what I needed to do.”

This season, Damsgaard has already made 27 league starts, more than any campaign since 2019/20 with Nordsjaelland.

Getting those minutes under his belt has been one thing, but the way he has finally managed to shine in the Premier League has been quite another.

What would he have thought had he been told how the campaign would pan out when he returned from the European Championships? “I would’ve thought it was a little bit crazy,” he says.

“I hoped I would get a lot more playing time, but going on to get 10 assists in the Premier League is a lot better than what I would have thought.”

The way Damsgaard plays is, somewhat ironically, always going to be taxing on his body and has stress-tested it at times this season.

As well as his creative spark, Damsgaard has the fourth-highest number of final-third possessions won in an all-action role which suits his game down to the ground.

He was once linked with some of Europe’s biggest clubs and may have put them on high alert this season with his injury troubles seemingly behind him, but he instead committed his future to the Bees by signing a new four-year deal earlier this season.

“You could say there was an element of repaying their faith,” he says. “It was a pretty easy decision for me, I’m very happy here.

“I just wanted to continue with that, and stay with this club which feels like home. Compared to other clubs, it’s very nice here – we have very good camaraderie, of course there are still different groups and we speak Danish together sometimes. But the atmosphere is great.”

That atmosphere has long resonated on the pitch with Brentford’s results against the traditional big six, leaving all of them with a bloody nose at one time or another. Arsenal have fared better than some rivals since losing in Brentford’s first-ever Premier League game in 2021, and have won all but one of their meetings since.

But with the Gunners having arguably bigger priorities with a Champions League quarter-final either side of Saturday’s latest game between the two sides, Damsgaard feels there may be an opportunity to strike.

“They’re a tough team obviously, but they have two games either side of us against Real Madrid. Maybe they will have a little bit of focus on those games, but every team in the Premier League knows how hard it is to win.

“You have to bring your A-game to win, even if you’re Arsenal or Liverpool. If they don’t bring that, we’ll have a very good chance of winning the game. There’s never a game we go into thinking we can’t win.”

Watch Arsenal vs Brentford live on Sky Sports Premier League from 5pm on Saturday; kick-off 5.30pm.