Few footballers’ career paths follow a straight line – for Tottenham Hotspur's Kevin Danso, some of his biggest highs and lows have come against Manchester United.
Born in Austria before moving to England aged six, Danso spent time with Reading and MK Dons, then began his senior career with Augsburg.
A loan move to Southampton didn’t go as well as hoped in 2019-20, including a game to forget against the Red Devils, but the 27-year-old centre-back has since developed into a seasoned Austria international, returning to England with Spurs and helping them beat the Mancunians to win the Europa League.
Kevin Danso is now a Europa League winner after tricky Saints start
Danso initially joined Spurs on loan from Lens in January, with the Londoners having an obligation to buy in the summer – he’s started the club’s last three Premier League games, and is loving life back in England.
“It’s been an amazing feeling to be back in the Premier League,” he tells FourFourTwo. “Growing up here and starting my football academy life here, Premier League football was always what you saw on the TV every weekend. It was always a dream for me to be in the Premier League, especially with a team like Spurs.”
Within months, he’d done what so many Spurs players had dreamed of doing over the past two decades – he’d won a trophy.
Danso was utilised as an extra centre-back in two key games, coming on as a late substitute as Spurs held on to a one-goal lead in the quarter-final at Eintracht Frankfurt, then doing the same during the final against Manchester United in Bilbao.
“The lads were doing such a good job and I just had to go on and do my little bit to help,” he explains. “It was just running through my mind – ‘I can’t let them score’. The manager put me on to keep the lead, so that was the most important thing for me – whenever the ball came in and around my area, I was just going to make sure I got something on it and kept it away from our goal.
“It’’s always a good feeling to go on and help the team in any capacity. I was really happy to be a part of it.”
Arise, Sir Magnet Head
Danso, though, has also started 20 games since he arrived at the club, and was affectionately labelled ‘Magnet Head’ by boss Thomas Frank after heading away countless crosses during a recent 3-0 win at Everton.
“I didn’t know he’d said that until my friends and team-mates told me, but I take pride in defending and I cleared a lot of set pieces against Everton – it was a positive so I’ll take it!” Danso laughed when asked about the moniker.
His long throws have also been useful. “It’s a weapon I’ve always had, it’s a way to score goals – every aspect of football is important,” he says.
The Austrian has partnered Micky van de Ven in central defence for the last three league games, although captain Cristian ‘Cuti’ Romero has now returned from injury and replaced him in the line-up for Tuesday’s 4-0 win over FC Copenhagen.
“Everybody knows how much quality Micky and Cuti have, it’s tough, but when I do get the opportunities I just have to show that I’m a quality player, do the best that’s possible and help the team,” Danso says.
“The most important thing is that we push on as a team and I help with that. Personally of course you want to play every game, but you also understand that at this moment in time that Cuti and Micky are performing very well, and when I get my opportunity, I just have to play at least at the same level.”
In his quest to start this weekend, as Spurs face Manchester United once more, this time in North London, has training consisted of him practising some dribbles up the pitch, to emulate Van de Ven’s incredible solo goal from his own penalty area against FC Copenhagen?
“Not quite!” Danso laughs. “I’m not sure if many people can do that quite like he did – it was an amazing goal. As soon as he won the ball and started running, I was just like ‘Go, go, go!’”
World Cup in his sights
That 4-0 win meant that Spurs remain unbeaten in the Champions League this season. They’re not among the favourites to win the competition, but given that they won the Europa League in a season when they finished 17th in the Premier League, does that show that nothing is impossible?
“Definitely – in football, anything is possible,” he says. “We showed a lot of resilience last season to win a trophy, despite a lot of injuries, a lot of things that didn’t go our way.
“We still managed to end it on a high – in football there are always highs and lows and the main thing is not always how you start, but how you finish.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to dig in. That’s what we did last season, and this season we want to achieve something similar, so we’ve got to dig in again.”
Danso’s own career has had highs and lows. He was full of optimism when he joined Ralph Hasenhuttl’s Southampton on a season-long loan in August 2019, with the south coast side having an option to buy.
That option wasn’t taken up – still only 20, Danso was sent off for two yellow cards on his home debut against Manchester United, and started just one more league game for the club. One of his final league appearances was as a half-time substitute in a famous 9-0 home loss to Leicester City. His stint on the south coast was a learning experience.
“One hundred per cent,” he says. “Before Southampton, at that stage of my career everything was very much on the up, and that was the first time that it didn’t really go my way.
“It told me a lot about myself, and I do blame myself a bit because especially in those periods, you have to work even harder and search for something inside you to really push yourself.
“I feel like I didn’t quite do that. I was very young of course, but that was the lesson I learned. I think it was one of the best things that probably happened to me.”
Now, he’s also on the brink of fulfilling another lifelong ambition, by playing at the World Cup with Austria. “I feel like that’s very possible,” he says. Ralf Rangnick’s side lead their qualification group, with two matches to go.
“We’ve got games coming up against Cyprus and Bosnia to secure that place at the World Cup. It’s definitely the dream.”
Community champion
Danso was speaking to FourFourTwo during a visit to Tottenham Foodbank – Spurs have been long-term supporters of the facility, as the defender helped to prepare food parcels alongside other volunteers.
“It’s something that Spurs have been involved in since 2019 and I wanted to support in any way I could,” he says. “I wanted to come down and see what it’s about – they do amazing work, I’ve just helped package up some food for a family of four, to help families out who need it, which is important.”
Danso has explained that his parents grew up Ghana, where people relied heavily on the support of their communities, and he also recently became an ambassador for homelessness charity The Passage.
“I’ve got a charity in Austria and a charity in Ghana – I grew up in the UK so I was looking for something I could get involved in here,” he explains.
“Homelessness wasn’t something I was too familiar with, but I read about it and thought ‘OK, this charity is something amazing’. There’s a stigma around homelessness, that it’s about bad decisions that people make, but when I visited the charity, I found out that it’s not exactly like that.
“It’s not a choice, it’s not always bad decisions that lead to that, so people need to be aware of that and support charities like The Passage, to help eradicate homelessness. I spoke to some of the people that the charity is helping, and their stories are amazing.”