Esbjerg

Ole Kjær kept goal in Esbjerg 481 times, a club record that no one has come close to, and he did it for a side whose best years were already behind it. Denmark's footballer of the year in 1978, he went to the European Championship in 1984 with a club that had won its last league title five years earlier and would not win another.

The titles came in a rush and then stopped. Esbjerg took the Danish championship in 1961, held it in 1962 and again in 1963, and added a fourth in 1965 — Jens Peter Hansen and Carl Emil Christiansen scoring through most of it. The fifth arrived in 1979 and closed the account. Since then the record book has been about cups and about climbing back: six lost finals, three won, the last of them in 2013 under Jess Thorup, who had played in the midfield here through the 1990s before returning to the bench.

The club itself was assembled rather than founded — two Esbjerg sides, one dating from 1898 and one from 1911, merged on 23 July 1924 into Esbjerg forenede Boldklubber, the blue and white EfB.

The recent past is plainer. A first-division title in 2012 brought promotion; a third-division title in 2024 marked how far the fall had gone. Blue Water Arena holds 17,442.

Jens Jørn Bertelsen played nine seasons in that midfield before leaving, then came back for two more at the end. He was footballer of the year in 1979, the season of the last championship, and he was still in the Denmark squad at the 1986 World Cup — a decade and a half after Esbjerg first handed him a place.