Sepp Piontek obituary: Denmark football manager

Born as a German citizen in what is now part of Poland and going on to achieve celebrated status in Denmark, Piontek had associations with three countries that have all inflicted pain on England’s football team at one time or another.

He was characterised as Alemano Bruto (the tough German), instilling Teutonic discipline, giving three-hour tactical briefings and pushing his players to breaking point in training sessions. He had been known to drag players out of discos late at night, yet he also had the witty, mercurial charm of a Brian Clough, just as liable to let his players spend all night partying if he felt they deserved it and because it helped with team bonding.

At the Euros in France in 1984, Denmark progressed to the semi-final and narrowly missed out on playing France in the final after losing a penalty shoot-out against Spain. By then Piontek had moulded a graceful side that could pass vertically through the lines, with players interchanging positions — redolent of the great Netherlands side of the Seventies that played “total football”.

Their kit — half red and white pinstripe and half red with red and pinstripe sleeves — also caught the imagination and became known as the “carnival show”. Schoolboys all over Britain were seen wearing it as they tried to demonstrate the skills of Denmark’s playmaker Michael Laudrup.

By the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, Denmark won the “group of death” with victories over Scotland, Uruguay and West Germany. Against a stubborn and cynical Uruguay, Denmark won 6-1 with Laudrup scoring a brilliant individual goal.

Piontek could not resist playing his strongest team in the final group game against West Germany, even though Denmark had already qualified, because they had never beaten them in a competitive fixture. They won 2-0 but the players’ energy sapped in the Mexican heat and Denmark’s reward for winning the group was a much more difficult second-round match against Spain; West Germany played Morocco.

Even so, Denmark were winning and playing well when Jesper Olsen tried a blind back pass that was seized upon by Spain’s young striker Emilio Butragueño (“the Vulture”). Denmark streamed forward to regain the initiative but the vulture swooped three more times, Spain won 5-1 and Denmark’s World Cup hopes were carrion.

To this day, a catastrophic error in Denmark is known as a “Jesper Olsen”, but the Danes had won many friends. Fifa’s technical report noted Denmark “played the most spectacular football during the tournament”.

Josef Emanuel Hubertus “Sepp” Piontek was born in Breslau in Germany (now Wroclaw in Poland) in 1940. He forged a good career as a full back playing more than 300 games for Werder Bremen, winning the Bundesliga in 1965 and six caps for West Germany before retiring in 1972. He went on to manage Werder Bremen and Fortuna Dusseldorf and narrowly failed to take Haiti to the World Cup in 1978 for the first time in its history.

He took over Denmark a year after the Danish Football Association had signed a lucrative sponsorship deal with Carlsberg on the proviso that professional standards were set in return. Having created a side with the tough defensive discipline of Morten Olsen, Soren Lerby and Frank Arnesen, with the flair of the Laudrup brothers, the wingplay of Jesper Olsen and the firepower of Preben Elkjaer, Piontek was building a new team that qualified for the 1988 Euros in West Germany but flopped at the tournament.

After Denmark failed to qualify for the 1990 World Cup in Italy, Piontek quit because of allegations in a Danish tabloid that he was offshoring some of his earnings to avoid paying Denmark’s high taxes. Yet he was remembered fondly and when the Danes won the European Championship in Sweden in 1992, the former coach was hailed as the “father of our success”. Piontek’s Carlsberg-sponsored team had been, after all, “probably the best…” in the world for a time.

Watching from the sidelines while sagely smoking his pipe, Piontek spoke Danish fluently and after the breakdown of his first marriage, he wed a Dane, Gitte. He is survived by three children, Stephanie, Jacob and Malene.

He went on to do for Turkish football what he had achieved for Denmark, albeit in a far more febrile atmosphere. He received death threats if Turkey lost, while some of his players carried guns to protect themselves. The country that was still reeling from being twice beaten 8-0 by England in the Eighties became a much tougher proposition under Piontek.

In later years he accepted an invitation to coach Greenland and took to matches against the likes of Orkney and the Isle of Man with the same enthusiasm as the “Danish Dynamite”.

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