The Norwegian Andreas Schjelderup and the Dane Casper Tengstedt will be announced as winter signings from Benfica in the coming days. It is about a double market operation carried out in recent days that allows coach Roger Schmidt to sign two promising football players.
Andreas Schjelderup is an 18-year-old winger and is regarded as the new football prodigy in Norway, a country that currently has some great world talents such as Erling Haaland or Martin Odegaard, who shine at Manchester City and Arsenal respectively. He comes from Nordsjaelland, from Denmark, a club that has an amount of around nine million euros, with a percentage in a future sale.
Casper Tengstedt, in turn, is 22 years old and plays for the Norwegian Rosenborg, which will receive about eight million euros. The striker is expected to arrive in Lisbon in the next few hours to undergo medical tests and sign a contract that is basically valid for five and a half seasons.
According to Ekstra Bladet newspaper, Tengstedt’s signing was practically complete in the Canary Islands, where Rosenborg trains. The player did not train yesterday as final details of the transfer are being finalized, which will also include a percentage in any future sale to the Norwegian club.
Strömberg was the pioneer
Benfica thus rediscovers the ways to the Scandinavian countries, in a kind of return to a successful past, especially in the 1980s. When President Fernando Martins started hiring Swedish midfielder Glenn Strömberg in January, coach Sven-Gören Eriksson, footballers from that region of Europe were nicknamed “tall, rough and blonde” in Portugal. However, that idea quickly began to change on February 5, 1983 with Strömberg’s debut in a match against V. Setúbal (1-1). After him came the Dane Michael Manniche and the Swedes Mats Magnusson, Jonas Thern and Stefan Schwarz, who also marked an era in Luz.
Interestingly, it was the arrival of a foreign coach at the start of this season, Germany’s Roger Schmidt, who returned the bet on the Scandinavian market. First the Dane Alexander Bah arrived, shortly afterwards the Norwegian Fredrik Aursnes and now it is the turn of Casper Tengstedt and Andreas Schjelderup, who increase the Scandinavian contingent in Luz to four.
The two players increase to 13 the number of Nordic footballers representing Benfica, again betting on a market paying off, after all, only Martin Pringle, Anders Andersson and Azar Karadas did not win with an eagle on their chest.
The child prodigy and the revelation
Little Andreas Schjelderup (1.76 m tall) started learning how to play football at Bodo/Glimt, the club in his hometown, where he quickly caught the eye, to the point that at the age of 16 he aroused the interest of Sevilla and Liverpool. But the player’s father chose Nordsjaelland after visiting several interested clubs. And the reason was obvious: the focus on the young talent of Scandinavia. He made his debut in the main team in February 2021, still aged 16, and started to earn his place to the point that he was recently voted the best autumn player in the Danish league, following a vote by the league’s coaches.
“I made the right choice when I decided to emigrate,” he told the online newspaper Nettavisen in October, adding that “the priority was the career plan that was offered”. Now it’s time to move to Lisbon, despite the “dream” of playing in Spain or England one day.
In turn, Casper Tengstedt is a case of meteoric rise as just six months ago he was a promising striker who had just helped Horsens rise to the Danish I Division, now he is the top scorer of one of the main teams in Norway scoring finally, he scored 15 goals in 14 games and provided six assists, enabling him to reach Benfica, who will play the round of 16 of the Champions League in February.
Tengstedt trained with Midtjylland, one of Denmark’s top training clubs, after being loaned to Germany’s Nuremberg in 2019/20 and the following season to AC Horsens, who eventually acquired his sports rights. But it was in the 2021/22 season that he settled permanently with the club and helped them win the Danish II Division, with 15 goals and six assists in 14 games. At the time, Rosenborg appeared to pay around a million euros for his signing in July 2022, a market operation much criticized by fans at the time…
However, his impact on the team was immediate as he scored five goals in the first three matches. Tengstedt was in heaven and the Denmark Under-21 call-up was another step towards his dream of one day reaching the Premier League. “I hope to play for Liverpool one day,” he said in an interview with Norwegian television channel TV2 Sport.
Source: DN
