Michael Stensgaard - Ironing It Out

"They don't warn you. Ever. Professional football is often shown as such an overtly glamorous occupation but there's a lot more to it than the media will ever care to show you. The girls, the nightlife, the money. It doesn’t really matter in the end does it?

Playing for Liverpool was a dream of mine. I used to look at my Mark Walters and Mike Marsh posters and I knew this was something I had to be part of. I remember when I got the call from Henry, my agent at the time, and was told Hvidovre had accepted a bid from Liverpool. I put down the spliff and just sat there, completely numb. Maybe I was high off that purple haze or maybe my dream was about to come true. Either way to this day I’m unable to explain the emotions I went through during those moments.

As soon as I arrived at John Lennon Airport I was greeted by some Danish Liverpool fans that had been waiting three hours to see me. One boy even bought me a Danish pastry. It was that sort of passion that made me know I was doing the right thing.

The day I signed I remember Nigel Clough, Phil Charnock and Lee Jones took me out for dinner. I forget the name of the restaurant but we were treated like gods! They let me place my roach right next to my pasta, allowing me to puff at my leisure. When I did this in Copenhagen I was given community service but here it was normal. I felt like I was with family. Phil Charnock had a bag of that mean green and we just stayed up all night, talking about our dreams of winning the league for Liverpool. We believed in ourselves. And as I took one last puff of the blunt I looked into the night sky with a sense of hope that I’d made it."

Michael Stensgaard, former Liverpool goalkeeper, recounts many tales from his injury hampered three year spell on Merseyside in his new book entitled ‘Ironing It Out’, a reference to his unfortunate ironing board injury. The book is due out in September 2011.