UEFA Nations League Play-off, Hampden Park, 23/3/25.

After a sterling performance in Piraeus on Thursday Scotland came down to earth with a bump at Hampden in the second leg.

They never looked like matching Greece’s commitment or cohesion. In the end 0-3 rather flattered us.

I fear for the World Cup qualification campaign now. Only the group winners qualify directly – and on this evidence that may well be Greece. It looks like Scotland may have to finish above either Denmark or Portugal (whichever loses their Nations League quarter-final is in our group) even to get a play-off place.

So two relegations in two days for teams close to my heart.

Football is a cruel mistress.

Another football name from my youth has gone. The death of Peter Lorimer has been announced.

He came to prominence playing in that great Leeds United side of the late 60s and early 70s, managed by Don Revie.

I actually saw him play once. He even scored. It was in a World Cup qualification game against Denmark at Hampden in 1972. Denmark outplayed Scotland all over the park except in our penalty box. Everything kind of petered out just before they reached there. Scotland won two-nil.

In the finals Lorimer was involved in the most bizarre free-kick incident ever to have happened during a World Cup. It was Scotland’s first game, against Zaire. Lorimer was lined up to take it when the ref blew his whistle and a Zaire player rushed out of the wall. Lorimer hesitated, waiting for the ref to blow for the ten yard distance to be re-established. He didn’t, and the Zaire player kicked the ball upfield. Lorimer scored the first in a 2-0 win.

Peter Patrick Lorimer: 14/12/1946 – 20/3/2021. So it goes.

Gosh, it comes round again.

The draw for the European qualification round for the 2022 World Cup (to be held in Qatar) was made today.

Scotland’s fate could have been worse I suppose – we managed to avoid holders France, world ranked no 1 Belgium and also Spain, England, Germany, Italy and Portugal, nemeses in previous qualification campaigns, but Denmark, Austria and Israel (yet again drawn in a group with Scotland) are no mugs; and I always get the fear over games against countries like the Faroe Islands and Moldova.

Our last two games were 1-0 defeats too let’s not forget, but I’ll give the team a pass on those as they were hungover (in the nicest sense I hasten to add) from managing to reach the Euro finals.

Taking an underpass below the railway we found a nice park in Aalborg: the Kildeparken.

There were two small thatched buildings there. One seemed to be a public convenience, the other may have been a caretaker’s hut. Pity about the grafitti:-

There was also a walkway with statues along its sides. This one is of the Three Graces:-

The park is also home to the Singing Trees. Each performer at Aalborg’s Concert Hall is asked to plant a tree alongside which is a device containing a recording of a sample of their music.

Sadly during our visit none the playbacks we tried were working. Here’s a clip from You Tube where they were:-

Aalborg (see earlier post) had some nice older buildings in streets quite near the city centre:-

Looking one way, then the other in another old street:-

This isn’t the sort of view normally associated with fjords. The word usually conjures up images of steep, almost mountainous sides and a narrow waterway.

This however is the Limfjord, which cuts Jutland in Denmark in two. And the countryside by its banks is flat. I thought that perhaps in Danish the word fjord just means inlet. (It seems it does, if you type ‘fjord’ on the ‘Danish’ side of this link. In all the other Scandinavian languages ‘fjord’ translates as ‘fjord’.)

We sailed up the easternmost bit of the Limfjord on our approach to the last stop on the trip, Aalborg, Denmark’s fourth largest city.

Moving on from the memorials to individual soldiers from Denmark I found the Memorial I had spotted from the Gefion Fountain.

King’s Gate entrance to the Kastellet behind:-

The Memorials’ inscriptions are Vore Faldne (Our Fallen) followed by,

I Dansk og I Allieret Krigstjeneste 1940-1945 (In Danish and in Allied War Service 1940-1945) and then,

Rejst af det Danske Folk. (Raised by the Danish People.)

Amaliehaven is a relatively new (1983) park near the Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen:-

From it you could see these onion domes. Onion domes are unusual for Denmark I’d have thought. By searching Google Maps I discovered the building they belong to is on a street called Bredgade. Apparently it is the Alexander Nevsky Church, the only Russian Orthodox Church in the city:-

There are more images of the church here. It would not look out of place in St Petersburg.

This rather grand looking frieze on Toldbodgade seemed to be over an underground car park. The inscription seems to read “Konge May Told Kammer” (King May Customs House?) and below that Anno 1733:-

I found this on the way in from Langelinie Pier, Copenhagen to the city centre.

Apparently a statue of two sisters, this obviously represents Norway’s thanks to Denmark.

This impressive monument greets you as soon as you leave Langelinie Pier in Copenhagen, Denmark, the second* stop on our recent Baltic cruise.

The winged female figure of Remembrance (modelled on Nike of Samothrace) is dedicated to those Danish merchant mariners who lost their lives in the First World War.

*(Our first stop was actually in Dundee. For some reason the trip cost £200 less – each – from Newcastle even though the ship was doing exactly the same journey.)