To reach Thomas Frank’s hometown of Frederiksvaerk, around 50 kilometres north of Copenhagen and where his mother still lives, The Athletic caught two trains and a bus from the Danish capital. The bus cuts through forests and fields, before it trundles past the glittering water of the Roskilde Fjord. It stops at the side of a motorway, and from there, the clubhouse of Frederiksvaerk (FFK) is accessed through a small tunnel.
It is a place still very much close to Frank’s heart. When the new Tottenham Hotspur head coach returns to Denmark, he runs past the club’s pitches.
“The last time he was here in March, I was sitting upstairs in the office,” Martin Holm Jensen, a senior figure at FFK, tells The Athletic. “I could hear somebody walking on the stones outside the front gate. He was standing down there looking onto the pitch and knocking on the window, so he came up and said hello.”
Frank has not forgotten any of his friends from Frederiksvaerk. When he turned 50 in October 2023, he took a group of 35 of them to the Spanish island of Mallorca to celebrate, some he had known since childhood. They played padel, drank cocktails and reminisced about the roles they had all played in Frank’s coaching career, which started in the remote Danish town with a population of just over 10,000.
“Thomas does everything he can to be the same person,” says Anders Bay, who has known Frank for over a decade. “At the start of every year, he always texts me to arrange to meet up when the season has finished. If you were a typical top manager, you would want to sit in a room by yourself or be with your family in your spare time but that’s not Thomas. He remembers everybody.”
Frank has spent the majority of the last seven years in charge of Brentford but has accepted the biggest challenge of his career. In June, he signed a three-year contract to replace Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham.
Frank earned £100 ($130) from his first coaching job. Now, he is on a multi-million-pound salary at Spurs, who have a 60,000-seater stadium and will play in the Champions League next season.
The Athletic has been to Denmark to trace the earliest steps in Frank’s journey to north London.
“Frederiksvaerk is a small town with a harbour but not many jobs, so most people leave to work in the city,” says Jensen.
Their football club, FFK, was formed in November 2004 when Frederiksvaerk Boldklub (FB) and Brederod merged. They compete in the seventh tier of Danish football.
Frank progressed through FB’s youth ranks and played in midfield for their first team in the 1990s. When he was 20, he was encouraged to become a coach by Jesper Olsen — no relation to the former Manchester United and Ajax winger of the same name. He was given a tracksuit and 1,000 Danish kroner, which amounts to just over £100.
“My father was part of the board and became youth-team chairman,” says Jacob Olsen, Jesper’s son. “My father tried to recruit senior players to become coaches. Thomas volunteered because he wanted to help young people and give something back.”
Frank worked alongside Jacob Hansen, with whom he remains close, and Lis Westberg Pedersen. The latter captained Denmark to victory at the 1971 Women’s World Cup in Mexico.
Frank studied for a sports degree at the University of Copenhagen, where he wrote about his experiences coaching FB’s under-eights and under-12s. Frank coached Jacob, who describes him as “human, ambitious and with his heart in the right place”. They still keep in touch and the Olsens visited him in London in December.
“He used the experiences he gained from university to develop us,” says Olsen. “He focused on everyone. Thomas and Lis were two fantastic people who created joy and a well-functioning team. He introduced the ‘trick of the week’, which the players loved.
“Thomas says the two biggest games of his career were the billion-dollar match for promotion to the Premier League at Wembley against Swansea in 2021 and the match for the Zealand Championship between Frederiksvaerk and Brondby. We beat Brondby 2-0. It was a joke but he remembers people. It was as if nothing had changed when we saw him. We enjoyed our trip to Brentford but it was clear he appreciated it too.”
The pitches where Frank started his coaching career no longer exist as they were left behind when FFK was created. The grass has overgrown and is covered with trees and bushes.
Frank left Frederiksvaerk in 1999 to join Hvidovre, a club in the Copenhagen suburbs who won the Danish top flight three times between 1966 and 1981. Peter Schmeichel represented them before he went on to play for Brondby, Manchester United and the national team.
Frank was recruited by Ebbe Bay, the youth team chairman at the time. He worked alongside Kim Hallberg, who now holds a senior role at the Danish Football Association (DBU), and Brian Riemer, who went on to become Frank’s assistant at Brentford and is now Denmark’s head coach.
Teddy Hebo is Hvidovre’s chairman and has been associated with them for more than 60 years. When Frank first joined, Hebo watched training one evening.
“There was almost no light on the pitch but Thomas was training with the players and it fascinated me,” Hebo says after taking The Athletic on a guided tour of the club’s facilities, pointing out the pitches where Frank spent so many hours. “He had this infectious energy that he transferred to the squad. He was dynamic, engaged and dedicated.
“He came over to me and asked, ‘Who are you?’. We talked and established a good relationship. Then he started training my son Thomas and we became even closer.”
Frank spent five years with Hvidovre and juggled coaching duties with a degree in psychology. He went travelling to New Zealand and Australia with his wife Nanna before they became parents for the first time. Money was tight and there were moments when he had to consider if full-time coaching was the right option for his family.
“Thomas got paid so little you wouldn’t believe it,” Hebo says. “Around £1,000 a year. I would invite Thomas and Kim over for red meat and red wine because that was a way to recognise their work.
“Thomas and Nanna were young people who worked hard. She studied to become a psychologist and then worked for a children’s association. The success of Thomas is his wife. She has been his strongest supporter but challenges him. When he goes a little bit wild, Nanna brings him back on track.”
Frank left Hvidovre in 2004 to become an integrated talent development (ITU) coach at second-division side B93. The ITU scheme was created by the DBU, which agreed to pay part of a coach’s salary at some of the best academies in Denmark. That coach would then focus on individual player development. It is similar to the newly created role of an individual development coach at Spurs.
Johan Lange was a coach at B93, after he had spent time in their academy as a child, and has had a big say in Frank’s career. In November 2023, Lange was appointed as Tottenham’s sporting director. The 45-year-old played a crucial role in the process of hiring Frank from Brentford. Over 20 years after they first crossed paths at a small club near the centre of Copenhagen, they have been reunited. Frank only spent 12 months with B93 but made a significant impact.
“Thomas had to be creative because we didn’t have a lot of money or the right clothing and equipment,” Frank Nielsen, B93’s sports manager, tells The Athletic in a building next to their clubhouse, which is being renovated. “He helped us to structure the way we trained players and developed what we call the ‘red line’. You sit down with all the coaches of the different age groups and make sure you are coaching them in the same way and are all heading in the right direction.”
Frank’s work with Hvidovre and B93 caught the attention of Birger Jorgensen at second-tier side Lyngby. The first time Jorgensen met Frank was at a meeting of Denmark’s coaches that the DBU hosted every summer in Vejle.
Lange moved to Lyngby in 2005 and Frank followed shortly after. They worked together alongside future Denmark head coach Kasper Hjulmand and Niels Frederiksen, who has just won the Polish top flight with Lech Poznan. They all shared a small office on the bottom floor of the clubhouse, which is now where the media and communications staff are based.
“Lygnby went bankrupt in 2001 and we had to rebuild it,” says Jorgensen, who is leading Lyngby’s stadium redevelopment. “After that, this club was like a laboratory. Kasper moved into the first team, Johan Lange had the reserves and then Thomas became the ITU coach. Kenneth Weber, who is now an assistant with the Danish national team, was here too.”
Lyngby’s crop of talented coaches would watch Champions League games together and took inspiration from Barcelona. Jorgensen visited Frank at Brentford’s training ground in May and there was a chart on the wall in the canteen which measured how many chances they were creating and conceding from set pieces.
“In that period, we didn’t think set pieces were part of football,” Jorgensen says. “We wanted to have the ball all the time. It’s Thomas’ personality that catches you but he has progressed tactically. He is clever to take the next level and follow how football has developed. He can adapt to different clubs.
“It’s incredible that (Frank and Lange) have joined Spurs. I texted them both: ‘It is crazy that you guys were here and are now there. I can’t advise you anymore, but my final piece of advice is, “Win every weekend”‘.”
During Frank’s time at Lygnby, Andreas Bjelland was a talented centre-back in their academy. They remain close and this year Bjelland called Frank for advice when he considered retiring.
“Thomas is a kind person,” Bjelland, who is now an assistant coach at Lyngby, says after accidentally interrupting The Athletic’s conversation with Jorgensen. “He has an interest in you as a person, not just as a player. He knows how to get the best out of you.
“He was good at challenging me and making me grow. When I was younger, I didn’t have a dream. He pushed me and gave me direction.”
Bjelland went on to play for Nordsjaelland, Twente and moved to Brentford in 2015. Within a year, he had been reunited with Frank, who had been appointed as an assistant to head coach Dean Smith.
“I was happy to see him,” Bjelland says. “The English culture was about fighting and winning duels. Thomas came in and made tactical adjustments. We played shape games of 11 v zero to see the patterns in play, to understand if I have the ball, then we want to go here, which way to turn my body… we had never done that before.”
After three years with Lyngby, Frank was interested in becoming the head coach of Denmark’s under-16s and under-17s. Hallberg, his former assistant at Hvidovre, had moved to the DBU and recommended him to then-general secretary Jim Stjerne Hansen.
Frank impressed Hansen during a meeting at their offices. The negotiations between the DBU and Lyngby were over a modest fee compared to the £10million ($13.5m) Spurs paid to take Frank and his backroom staff from Brentford.
“I asked Thomas for a copy of his employment contract and he said it didn’t exist,” says Hansen, who was general secretary from 1988 until 2014. “He just got paid every month and that was it. Somebody from Lyngby called me and said: ‘Jim, you have to pay £15,000 for Thomas’. I replied, ‘Can you send me a copy of his contract?’. I never heard from them again.”
Denmark topped their group at the Under-17 European Championship in 2011 with victories against Serbia, France and an England side that included Raheem Sterling and Jordan Pickford. They lost against Germany in the semi-finals.
Later that year, they played in the Under-17 World Cup for the first time, but finished bottom of a group containing Brazil, Ivory Coast and Australia. Brazil’s captain was future Paris Saint-Germain defender Marquinhos, while Souleymane Coulibaly scored a hat-trick for Ivory Coast against Frank’s team. That name may ring a bell among Spurs fans: Coulibaly finished as the tournament’s top goalscorer, which led to a move to Spurs. Sadly, he never made an appearance for the first team.
Frank helped to develop future Spurs midfielders Christian Eriksen and Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, as well as Arsenal’s new signing Christian Norgaard. He worked with a lot of the Danish squad that lost to England in the semi-final of the senior European Championship in 2021.
Frank had a close relationship with Hansen. He would regularly visit his boss at home and “loved” eating the platters of cheese Hansen’s wife prepared. He took over the under-19s and asked about stepping up to the under-21s. Yet, he still had a lot to learn.
“He was a little bit naïve because he wanted to play like Barcelona,” Hansen says. “Thomas has a close friendship with Albert Capellas, the former director of Barcelona’s academy, who then became his assistant at Brondby.
“Thomas was in favour of possession, possession and possession. He came back from a game against Norway and said, ‘Jim, we had 65 per cent of the ball’. But they lost 2-1.
“When Thomas then worked with me at Brondby, he said, ‘I admit that this is about results and nothing else matters’.”
While Frank was in charge of Denmark’s youth teams, Bay contacted him about working as a pundit for the television company Channel Nine. Frank made multiple appearances on their shows and developed a relationship with Bay.
Bay worked alongside Aldo Petersen, who became Brondby’s chairman in 2013. That summer, Frank was appointed as their head coach. Bay was their new head of communications and marketing. Hansen released Frank from his contract with Denmark without a fee.
“People were saying he was just a youth-team coach,” Bay, who is now the head of sport for the Walt Disney Company in Denmark, says. “But he likes to be challenged and get new things into his head. He is curious, empathetic and attentive.
“He is interested in other people. He had one-on-one meetings with all the members of staff. He is so open-minded and being with people inspires him. He is very good at getting people around him — staff, players and the board.
“He wants to feel what’s going on in a player’s life. We had Johan Elmander playing for us. Johan lost his father and Thomas said, ‘Whatever you need, time off, prioritise your family’. But he is not just a nice guy. He wants to win.”
Bay experienced Frank’s relentless desire to win on a trip to Dubai in 2014. Brondby’s staff competed against each other in a three-v-three beach football tournament where they were split into four teams. Bay was paired with Frank and then sporting director Per Rud. They won the competition but Bay was unhappy with their approach.
“I went to the bar in the evening and I was thinking about what happened because there were times when I was free but they didn’t pass the ball to me,” Bay says. “I confronted Per and Thomas and said, ‘Guys, what the f*** was going on?’. They laughed and said, ‘We wanted to win!’.
“He is ambitious and has a lot of self-confidence but is reflective. There were some tough times at Brondby. He didn’t win any of his first seven games. But he just worked harder. He might have a difficult start at Spurs but he is a survivor.
“It’s important that people remember you for who you are and not what you are, but Thomas prefers to be remembered as a successful manager rather than a great human being.”
Brondby only finished in ninth, five points above the relegation zone, the season before Frank joined. He guided them to back-to-back top-four finishes but left towards the end of his third season in charge. Brondby’s chairman, Jan Bech Andersen, had criticised Frank on an online forum using the alias Oscar, his son’s name. Frank held a press conference after the news broke and resigned. Andersen stepped down but remained on the board. The Athletic contacted Andersen for this piece but he did not want to comment.
A year after leaving the DBU, Hansen joined Brondby’s board and was there when Frank left. “We made two mistakes at Brondby with the coaches — one was Kent Nielsen and the other was Thomas,” he says. “But the pressure at Brondby is always tough. When the results are not there, the first thing they look at is the coach. What happened with Thomas and the owner is a sad end to the story.”
“People see Thomas as a nice and inclusive person but if you take advantage of him once or you don’t respect him then you are out,” Bay says.
“Thomas is not someone who compromises his values,” according to Hebo. “He hates bulls*** and is not afraid of speaking up. It is about hard work and humbleness for Thomas. It’s not just words. He lives with it.”
Seven months after resigning from Brondby, Frank became an assistant at Brentford following a meeting in a hotel with then co-directors of football Phil Giles and Rasmus Ankersen. The long-term plan was for him to succeed Smith but nothing was guaranteed.
“Thomas moved his family from Copenhagen to London for a job which I’m sure did not pay that well,” Hansen says. “I met him in London and we had a cup of coffee together. He said, ‘It’s tough with a wife and kids who are going to school here in a different system from Denmark but we will give it a try and see how it develops’. I admire that he took a risk and it has taken him to Tottenham.”
When Frank became Brentford’s head coach in October 2018, he got back in touch with Hebo, now the former managing director of the Danish and Norwegian division of Eli Lilly, an American pharmaceutical company. He was senior vice president for corporate human Eli Lilly at Danish firm Lundbeck, where he was responsible for talent development, and has written books about leadership.
After losing eight of his first 10 games in charge, Frank started to ring Hebo every Friday evening to discuss his challenges. Hebo encouraged Frank to set career goals and they came up with the acronym PATH — purpose, ambition, togetherness and hard work.
“Thomas has invested so much in leadership,” Hebo says. “One of the areas we worked on is called ‘constructive cynicism’. When you’re in a top job, you need to make difficult decisions and you need to deliver them in the right way. He has developed that significantly. He always asks for input before he makes decisions but is not afraid of making tough calls.
“He is still the same person he was when we worked at Hvidovre but he needs to manage his energy levels. He keeps going but sometimes you need to slow down. Thomas likes to chase lots of rabbits but sometimes you need to choose just one that you want to catch.”
Frank has only come close to running out of energy on one occasion. Towards the end of the 2019-20 season, Brentford won eight matches in a row to boost their chances of automatic promotion from the Championship but lost their final two games. They reached the play-off final but lost after extra time to west London rivals Fulham.
“A couple of days later, he was having breakfast with me by the sea and he was crushed,” Bay says. “It was devastating. He has this huge capacity and he can manage so many things but the lights went out. You cannot convince the players, staff and fans if you are not energised. But then, 10 days later, he was back. He was more idealistic about how to play football 10 years ago and now it’s about winning. He doesn’t care if they play amazing football if they lose.”
Brentford won the play-off final at the second attempt under Frank to achieve promotion to the Premier League. They memorably beat Arsenal 2-0 on the opening day of the 2021-22 season, their first game in the top flight for 74 years, and went on to finish 13th.
Frank recorded two top-half finishes in four seasons with Brentford. He missed out on the Chelsea job last summer to Enzo Maresca and was a potential replacement for Erik ten Hag at Manchester United. Now he has got his opportunity at a bigger club thanks to Spurs.
“It’s probably one of the biggest jobs a Danish coach will ever have,” Bjelland says. “I’m so happy for him and proud of what he has done. He has earned it.”
“I contacted him when he was working at Brondby because I work with underdeveloped kids and one of them was a big fan,” Nielsen says. “Thomas made sure I could take him to see the facilities and watch the team train. He has never forgotten where he comes from. He is humble but it will be interesting to see how Tottenham will change him because the environment is much bigger.
“But it is unbelievable how he has gone from coaching at our little club to one of the biggest teams in the world.”
(Top photos: Nick Potts, Naomi Baker/Getty Images; design: Kelsea Petersen/The Athletic)
