Harald Nielsen

Harald Nielsen was born in Frederikshavn and started his footballing career in hometown club Frederikshavn fI, where he debuted in the second-highest Danish league in March 1959. From his position of center forward, Nielsen finished the top scorer of the league as Frederikshavn won promotion to the Danish football championship. In the top Danish league, Nielsen debuted for Frederikshavn against Boldklubben Frem in March 1960. Frederikshavn won 3–1, with Harald Nielsen scoring all three goals. The team finished the league in fifth place with Nielsen becoming league top scorer.

In 1961, Harald Nielsen moved abroad to play professionally for Bologna F.C. in Italy. At Bologna, il freddo danese (the cold Dane) was a part of the 1963–64 Serie A winning squad, and he was the Italian league topscorer in both 1963 and 1964. Following six seasons at Bologna, Harald Nielsen moved to Inter in 1967, in a transfer deal which made him the most expensive player in the world at the time. Although he started by winning the unofficial world cup for teams by beating Santos with Pelé 1–0 in New York, Nielsen did not find the same degree of success with Inter as in Bologna, and following years at S.S.C. Napoli and U.C. Sampdoria a back injury kept him mostly off the field, he ended his career in 1970.

Harald Nielsen made his debut for the Denmark national team on 13 September 1959 against Norway in Oslo, as the youngest Denmark national team player ever. Only 17 years and 322 days old, he scored a single goal in the 4–2 win.

In the summer of 1960, he represented Denmark at the 1960 Summer Olympics football tournament in Rome. Denmark finished runners-up and Nielsen was the leading goals scorer of the tournament with 6 goals. His international potential as a striker became obvious already on 10 May 1960, when he scored two goals in a Copenhagen XI game against the 1958 Brazilian world champions team, which two years earlier had another largely unknown 17-year-old Pelé making his debut on the world stage. The two would meet again playing for their respective club teams later in their careers, but in a strange twist of fates while Pelé was essentially banned from playing outside Brazilian team(s), Nielsen would be banned from playing on the Denmark national team. As the Danish Football Association did not allow professionals to represent the Denmark national team until 1971, Nielsen was banned from the national team at 19 years old when he joined Bologna, and would not play another national team match. This was a great frustration to Harald Nielsen, which he repeatedly voiced in interviews with Danish media.

Bologna

Mitropa Cup (Coupe Centrale D'Europe): 1961–62; runner-up 1962–63 Italian Serie A Championship: 1963–64 Denmark

Olympic Silver Medal: Rome 1960 Individual

Årets Fund (Oldest Danish Sports Prize): 1959 Danish Championship – Topscorer in the Tournament: 1960 (19 goals) Topscorer in the Olympic Football Tournament: Rome 1960 (6 goals) First Danish Player of the Year: 1961 Mitropa Cup Topscorer in the Tournament: 1961–62, 1962–63 Caltex Sportsman Dell'Anno: 1963–64 on YouTube Serie A – Capocannoniere (Topscorer in the tournament): 1962–63 (21 goals), 1963–64 (19 goals) Cavaliere/Knight Order of Merit of the Italian Republic: 1992 Sportens Ridderkors: 2002 Nettuno d'oro: 2004 Honorary President Rebild National Park Society: 2007 First Honorary Member of F.C. Copenhagen: 2007 Danish Football Hall of Fame: 2010 Archived 12 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine Protektor F.C. Copenhagen Legends Club: 2014