If there is a secret to Midtjylland’s success in the transfer market, it is not found on the training pitch but in the classroom. The Danish club, long noted for an innovative approach, had already banked more than €200m (£170m) in player sales since 2018 before this summer, and they have now completed the most profitable window in their short history.
The business was done quickly. The departures of the Guinea-Bissau striker Franculino Djú to Trabzonspor and the Chile forward Darío Osorio to Crystal Palace on loan with an obligation to buy are worth a potential €62m (£53.2m), with both deals completed inside 48 hours at the end of the window. They followed the sales of the homegrown winger Aral Simsir and the South Korean defender Lee Han-beom to Club Brugge for a further €25m. Among the incoming group was David Martínez, the 20-year-old Venezuela international signed from the MLS side LAFC. “I think hectic will be a good word,” said the club’s technical director, Kristian Kjær, of the past couple of months.
What ties Midtjylland’s outgoing players together is a method that includes mandatory English lessons at least three times a week. “They are as important for them as it is to train,” Kjær said. “Because if they cannot understand English within six months, they cannot communicate with the coach. So it’s quite important for our common success.” The club’s squad contains 17 nationalities drawn from five continents, and coaches are recruited from around the world to help new arrivals settle. “We’re not running Midtjylland as a Danish club; we are an international club,” Kjær said, describing Djú and Osorio as “poster boys for what we are trying to do”.
Osorio’s move, which was confirmed almost two hours after the Premier League deadline had passed, is in line to become the most expensive sale in Danish top-flight history, with Palace obliged to pay £22.3m next summer and up to a further £3.4m in bonuses. The 22-year-old has made his first start for Palace in their 3-0 Carabao Cup win against Middlesbrough, having come on against Fulham a few days earlier in the Premier League.
Midtjylland had spotted him while he was playing for Universidad de Chile and saw off competition from RB Leipzig, Milan and Atalanta to sign him in August 2023 – the same month that the Brentford owner, Matthew Benham, sold his controlling stake in the club to the Danish businessman Anders Holch Povlsen. “Darío prioritised the importance for him to start in a club and environment in Europe that could help him grow so one day he could go to the Premier League, which has been his dream since he was a small boy,” Kjær said. “His integration off the pitch was most important. Chilean football is not, and I don’t try to sound disrespectful, the most professional setup when it comes to nutrition and habits outside the pitch. Darío used to eat a lot of white bread for dinner and he couldn’t understand why he was not fully energised in the morning. That was one of the first things we did: look into his nutrition plan.”
A predominantly left-footed forward who prefers playing as an inverted right-winger but can also fill the No 10 role, Osorio ended his first season in Denmark with eight league goals. “Since then, we have seen him putting on layers and layers,” Kjær said. “Darío has been outgrowing the league for some time and he was by far, in my opinion, the best player by a distance. We are very happy to see him making the step and believe he has the quality to be competitive in the Premier League, not as a sub but as a starting lineup player.”
There were nervous moments on deadline day. Palace had pursued Malick Fofana before pivoting back to Osorio at the last minute when the Lyon forward chose Sunderland. Kjær said the club had prepared both the agent and the player for the possibility that everything would go down to the final days of the window, arguing that English clubs are not inclined to sign players from outside England, especially from leagues below the top five. “It was a bit stressful, especially for Darío,” he said. “But at the same time, mentally, he was also a bit prepared for that: ‘OK, I have to perform in the beginning of the season to keep myself in the shop window.'”
Midtjylland hope the arrival of Martínez for €7.3m, a Danish record, will help fill the void left by Osorio and by Djú, their top scorer last season with 17 goals. The squad has also been strengthened by the teenage pair Olashile Musa Lawal and Ikenna Udechukwu, channelled through the club’s FC Ebedei academy in Nigeria, which was established in 2004 and has helped produce players such as Coventry’s Frank Onyeka. Midtjylland are chasing a first title since 2024, having finished as runners-up last season to the surprise package AGF.
“We are just standing on the shoulders of the work we have done earlier,” Kjær said. “But, to sound a bit boring because it takes so much work, it’s also a bit according to strategy. This is what we hoped for, but also what we have worked for. That is why it makes us proud. It’s not just pure luck.”