Harald Nielsen

Harald Nielsen
Nielsen in the jersey of FC Bologna
Personnel
Surname	Harald Ingemann Nielsen
birthday	October 26, 1941
place of birth	Frederikshavn ,  Denmark
date of death	11th August 2015
Place of death	Bologna ,  Italy
size	174 cm
position	striker
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1959-1961	Frederikshavn fI	50 (44)
1961-1967	Bologna FC	157 (81)
1967-1968	Inter Milan	8 0(2)
1968-1969	SSC Naples	10 0(2)
1969-1970	Sampdoria Genoa	4 0(0)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1959-1960	Denmark	14 (15)
1 Only league games are given.

Harald Ingemann Nielsen (born October 26, 1941 in Frederikshavn , † August 11, 2015 in Bologna , Italy ) was a Danish football player . As a striker of FC Bologna , he was twice top scorer in Serie A .

Career

In Denmark (1959–1961)

Harald Nielsen, born in 1941 in Frederikshavn, a port city in northern Denmark, began his football career with the local club Frederikshavn fI, where he made his debut in the second Danish football league in March 1959. In his position as a center forward, Nielsen ended the 1959 season as a top scorer in the second division, helping his team to move up to the 1st division . In this he made his first game against BK Frem København on the first day of the 1960 season . Frederikshavn won the game 3-1, with all three goals scored by Harald Nielsen. At the end of the season, Frederikshavn fI finished fifth in the 1st division, which is the club's best ranking in the first division, and Nielsen was again top scorer. These successes made him interesting for foreign clubs, of course, and in 1961 he was signed by FC Bologna .

In Italy (1961–1970)

From summer 1961, Harald Nielsen played for FC Bologna in what was then the best football league in the world, the Italian Serie A. After he had not become an absolute regular in his first season in the Emilian city and only played sixteen games (eight goals) made, he made 29 appearances in his second season and scored nineteen goals. Together with the Argentinian Pedro Manfredini from AS Roma , he scored the most goals of the season in Serie A in 1962/63 . In the following season , Nielsen was again top scorer in Serie A, this time with 21 goals in 31 games. At the same time, he and his team became Italian football champions after first place in the table had been tied with Inter Milan , which necessitated a playoff for the championship, which Bologna won with goals from Giacinto Facchetti with an own goal and Harald Nielsen in the Olympic Stadium in Rome with 2 : 0 won. This championship has remained the last for Bologna FC to this day. In the following seasons, FC Bologna and Harald Nielsen were unable to build on their previous successes: in 1964/65 they came in sixth, in 1965/66 second behind Inter Milan and in 1966/67 third. Nielsen also managed to win the top scorer list in none of the seasons mentioned.

In 1967, Harald Nielsen was signed by Inter Milan as the most expensive transfer in Serie A to date, but he was not nearly as successful at Internazionale as at FC Bologna. His time at Grande Inter , as the former Inter Milan team was called because of their many successes, began with a bang. At the unofficial world championship for club teams, he scored the decisive goal for Inter Milan 1-0 against FC Santos for Pelé . In league operations in the 1967/68 season , Harald Nielsen only made eight appearances in Helenio Herrera's team , which only reached a disappointing fifth place. Nielsen wasn't very successful in his last two seasons in Italy either. In 1968 he joined the league rivals SSC Napoli , where he only played ten league games in which he scored two goals. After only one year his time in the south of Italy ended and he went to Sampdoria Genoa , where he ended his career at the age of 29 after four league games without a goal in 1970.

National team

Harald Nielsen made fourteen international matches for the Danish national soccer team between 1959 and 1960 . With her he took part in the 1960 Olympic football tournament in Italy. After the Danish team had survived round after round, they met in the final at the Stadio Flaminio of Rome on Yugoslavia , which they lost 3-1. Harald Nielsen scored six goals in five tournament games at the 1960 Olympic Games , making him second on the top scorer list. Only a short time after the Olympic Games, however, Harald Nielsen's national team career ended, which he practically did himself by moving to FC Bologna. At that time, professional football had not yet been introduced in Denmark, and professionals playing abroad - as Nielsen became when he moved to Italy for Serie A - were not allowed to play in the national team until 1971.

After the active time

After the end of his career as an active soccer player, Harald Nielsen founded a company that imported Italian leather to Scandinavia together with his wife Rudi, a former actress in whose films Harald Nielsen had often worked as a supporting actor . He was also involved in Danish football again since the 1970s, when he and Helge Sander drafted the plan to found a Danish football league based on the European model. As a result of these plans, the Danish Football Association allowed professional football. Together with Alex Friedman, Nielsen founded FC København A / S and became its first president. FC København A / S was the predecessor of Parken Sport & Entertainment, which supported the newly founded FC Copenhagen from 1992 to 1997 . Harald Nielsen later received the club's top honors as one of the sponsors of FC Copenhagen and regularly followed FC Copenhagen's home games from the A grandstand of the Parken Stadium . He was also co-owner and founder of the largest Danish company that builds summer houses. From 1997 to 2007 he was also President of the Rebild Bakker Society. Between 1991 and 2009 he headed the Gunnar Nu Foundation and was responsible for supplying Danish sport with nine million Danish kroner in those years. During his time as a player, he wrote six books that were known as Harald Books in the 1960s .

Harald Nielsen died in Bologna at the age of 73. He was buried in his Danish homeland on Ordrup Kirkegård in the Charlottenlund district of Gentofte Municipality .

Web links

Commons : Harald Nielsen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Harald Nielsen in the database of weltfussball.de
• Harald Nielsen in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Profile of the player
• Information about the player
• Player biography
• Calcio, morto Harald Nielsen: stella del super Bologna anni '60

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary (Danish)
2. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Harald Nielsen