LOU CITY
well for the then 19-year-old Magnus who, after
deliberating with his manager, decided to make
the move back to the club he was a part of earlier
in his career, BK Soelleroed-Vedbaek, and finish
his schooling.
It was there his visions of grandeur and
adventure led Magnus to set his sights on leaving
his native country and playing abroad. He shared
his thoughts with a teammate at the time, who
knew a futsal coach with international connections,
Bo Holden. He was the manager of the domestic
futsal powerhouse Jaergersborg-Gentofte Futsal
(JB Futsal), who got Magnus in touch with James
O’Connor ahead of LouCity’s inaugural season
in late 2014. After seeing Magnus’ highlights,
O’Connor invited the Dane to try out for the
forthcoming team and made Magnus part of the
first raft of singings ahead of the 2015 season, a year
in which Magnus played 29 games, scoring eight
goals and notching five assists from his attacking
midfield position. Most of the offense ran through
Magnus, who with 2015 MVP Matt Fondy, cut
an imposing sight for the opposition’s defense.
Magnus remained with the Louisville outfit
for the 2016 season but was slow off the mark-
rehabbing from offseason surgery to repair a labral
tear in his hip, which meant he didn’t see the pitch
until the latter half of the season. He could only
record 16 appearances and 777 minutes before
time ran out on his and Louisville City’s season.
Magnus kept playing on the pitch, too. He
signed on with Boldklubben Frem, members of
the third tier of Danish soccer, in order to keep
fit for Futsal. After being called up to the Danish
national Futsal team, Magnus got to explore some
exotic locales, such as Kazakhstan and Dubai,
with his countrymen.
All this time, he kept in close contact with
Coach O’Connor and the LouCity teammates
he left behind. He watched most of the games
from wherever he was and knew that there was
something special going on here. The door never
closed on Magnus, and when Camilla got the
opportunity to study Bioinformatics for her
master’s thesis at Harvard, he knew the time
was right. Magnus signed back on with Louisville
City on Jan. 4 of this year, returning to the club
that he had come to be an important part of.
Ask any LouCity player about the locker room
atmosphere, Magnus included, and they’ll tell
you it’s a professional one, but also feels like a
family. For Magnus, it was family that took him
back home to Denmark, and it’s family that brought
him back to Louisville.
Meanwhile, the time spent from home had been
wearing on the Dane. Back home in Denmark,
a country that’s about half the size of Indiana, a
30-minute car ride is considered quite the trek to
go see family, who traditionally live close to home.
Magnus had also left his girlfriend, Camilla, as she
finished her equivalent of high school.
It was after the 2016 season when a healthy
dose of homesickness led Magnus back home,
where he linked back up with Bo Holden and JB
Futsal, and joined the club for their 2017 campaign,
one that ended with them hoisting the Danish
Championship. Magnus, like most Danish kids,
was no stranger to Futsal, the version of the sport
played on a court, with five players per team plus
a goalkeeper. The fact that Futsal is played indoors
meant that it was usually all that was available
during the long, bleak Scandinavian winters,
and it also meant that players had to develop
the technical side of their game, yielding more
well-rounded players. It harkened back to those
afternoons spent between school and soccer
practice for Magnus, too.
JUNE/JULY 2018 : EXTOL
41