Decisive for Denmark’s success at the European Championships, he left football due to too much pressure: for years he was part of spiritual companies.
Telling the life of Lars Elstrup it’s really difficult. Beyond the sensationalist patina, the social laughs for the appearances like mom did it on the Danish fields and the complacent looks of those who believe they have understood everything from their life, there is her world of her. On the planet of football, there are three ways to go to eternity. One is to win. The second is linked to the romanticism of the flag and its saying no to every maxi-mega-ultra capitalist proposal from the outside. The third is to become a cult with behaviors considered bizarre, out of the ordinary. Råby’s boyfriend is in the almanacs for point number one and tres. The two, nuanced, but real.
Elstrup is neither Brian nor Michael Laudrup. He is two decades away from Eriksen and outside the Danish borders he is certainly not remembered as Peter Schmeichel. Yet there is his name printed in large letters in the book of the only great Danish success. At Euro ’92, when fate decided that the Copenhagen national team should win the tournament, the glossy side of football presents him ‘simply’ as one of the heroes who made history, decisive for the success in the groups against France, in goal in the lottery of the semifinal penalties (against the Netherlands) which gave the troops of the late Richard Møller Nielsen the chance to play the final, then won against the very favorite Germany.
The audience would like to be Elstrup. Winning number 10, smiling, golden suit. Lars, however, would have liked to be someone else even then. The pressure for the expectations generated by the success at the European Championships is too great for the thirty-year-old, who after wearing the jerseys of Randers, Brondby, Feyenoord, Luton Town and Odense, decides to end it all. With football. When the media converse with Lars, they have to accept his uncommon worldview, and consequently not for this particular: perhaps enlightened.
Chosen by Goal
ANXIETY PUSHES HIM AWAY FROM FOOTBALL
Over the years, ‘tipsbladet’ has thought above all to shed light on Elstrup’s life after hanging expectations and shoes in 1993:
“I quit because I had become anxious. I suffered from anxiety in my mind and body, I was sick from cramps both consciously and unconsciously. I remember two episodes in particular: one was against Brøndby at Odense Stadium, where I knew I didn’t I could have reached a ball. I chased it anyway and found myself unconscious, forced to be changed. The second incident happened in a retreat in Vedbæk with the national team, where I took a corner kick, even if it shot me to the groin.
I have not stopped, I kicked to knowingly aggravate the injury, so as to skip the international match on Wednesday for too much anxiety. In fact, I’ve had anxiety all my life, even as a child, kid, teenager, professional gamer, and adult. I was afraid of getting hurt, afraid of losing the ball or being in control of a car. The only solution was to walk away from football to calm down, be normal or feel happy. So I stopped at 30 “.
When Elstrup can no longer bear the sky above him that seems to crush him, he is in Odense, in the third largest city in Denmark. There is something rotten in the country, resulting from the exaggerated expectation for those who emerge in a certain area, and Lars can no longer keep up with it. He is informed that a spiritual community called Sangha exists 30 km away. Interested in trying everything to avoid worst trouble and ‘final’ ideas, he learns that it is a subdivision of The Wild Goose Company, the ‘Wild Goose Company’ sect headed by Michael Barnett.
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THE COMPANY OF THE WILD GOOSE: SPIRITUALITY
Disappeared in 2019, Barnett is one of those figures that his followers are able to describe in detail, almost never finding positive responses from the rest of the world. A guru of meditation and energy techniques who has put all his experience into the OneLife society:
“After football I had to look for something new. I took a self-development course for three months and eventually moved into a spiritual collective. Barnett, whom I met in person, gave me a spiritual name, Darando. It means “the river that flows into the sea”. I have gained a lot of experience, insight and understanding, I have learned to organize myself in life physically and mentally to make more profits. I managed to have a lot of human resources without having regrets, I became richer and I can live better in the present and shape my future “.
Darando, or Lars Elstrup, who during his football career was a prolific forward, with a remarkable average in the national team (13 goals in 34 appearances), lived in the community near Odense for a year, before using all the energy collected to make a leap to the next level. Break away from Darando and the Wild Goose Company to return to your own self born in 1963, with an almost banal name and surname. I of him:
“We broke up with Wild Goose leader Michael Barnett and we founded our community, The Heart of the Sun. 50 people. Throughout the period from 1993 to 2000, I lived with these people. The reason I left the collective is because I was driven by a willingness to level up and make a profit instead of a loss. It was new, exciting, a nice place “
Protagonist of the documentary broadcast on Danish TV in 1994, Elstrup will be shown intent on performing an ecstatic, free, engaging dance. He is not ascetic, considering that Lars will continue to have a common lifestyle in many respects: bacchus and tobacco will accompany him during his years of his at The Heart of Sun. For the Danish people, he is ‘strange’. There is no other way to highlight how his compatriots see him: out of the ordinary. And not in a positive way.
When it turns out that Elstrup, thanks to the money accumulated during his football career, is in possession of a houseboat in Nyhavn, he will try to put stakes on the stories that are starting to be more and more absurd by word of mouth:
“It is not, rather it is a sailboat that I lived on during the summer”.
Over the years Elstrup will end up in the front pages, especially of tabloid weeklies, for forms of protest and activism that will never be understood: like that of sitting in Strøget, Copenhagen, wearing a mountain of Danish crowns:
“The purpose was to see if anyone would take the money, because I would actually give it away. Most felt I was there begging. I didn’t say anything and it was thrilling to watch the passersby. Some threw me. money, but one in the end took it. I smiled at him because he understood the purpose “.
![Lars Elstrup]()
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MEDALS SOLD FOR CHARITY AND THE NUDE
There is an event in Lars Elstrup’s life that separates negative from positive judgments. Euro 1992 champion, member of Odense, winner of the Danish league in 1989, he decides to break away from the old materialism, for a greater good. Real, touchable. After giving away the gold medal of the Europeans and the kits of his career, he organizes an auction in which the medals of his was in his homeland are present:
“I cleaned up my apartment to get rid of unnecessary items. I have medals in my heart in the form of experiences, so I could create joy by giving or selling them.”
The 16,000 crowns, around 2,000 euros, put together, are donated to help children with cancer at the Odense hospital. This is not money for his life, considering the hefty nest egg set aside during his decade as a pro. A nest egg that allows him, for example, to travel to India to work on his own spirituality under the guidance of a teacher. Sweeping away other people’s judgments and thoughts.
The judgments do not affect him, but they arrive bombastic especially in 2016, when Lars Elstrup enters the field completely naked in the Danish league match between Randers and Silkeborg. Jumps, somersaults, smiles and even a vertical movement between petrified fans and players halfway between amused and scandalized. Looking from the outside, there is very little fun. He often he has in fact revealed that he had thought of ending it all. And not with football.
He went on, being pointed out by those who have never known his deeds. Who is that man? Lars Elstrup. He keeps walking. Anxious, but sure I want to get over it. Aware of being able to do good. Because his entry during Randers-Silkeborg, for example, led to an apology of his own: punished with five years of Daspo, he offered to entertain the public during the interval of a match of the club in which he grew up over the years’ 80, from its inception to 1986:
“It will be a show for the people and there will be dancing, cheerful music and special care in the program. I want to be the architect behind it all, it will be completely free for you. I’m sorry for the inconvenience I may have caused.”
The answer that Lars Elstrup thought, perhaps naively, could be positive, will not come. We will know less and less of him, slippery and free between a European and an Asian continent, without ever being ordinary and understood. Guest of a friend, on the street for artistic and political demonstrations, on his own boat with his legs crossed to go beyond the amused glances of interviewees and onlookers.
In Vissenbjerg, in Nyhavn, India, Elstrup smiles at those who judge him, at those who insult him. He tells about himself and his creed, his life. He tries to open his mind, to assimilate new knowledge to move forward. The first level is his football career. Going in and going up to the second, the glory of his compatriots appears for the goal to France and the success of the Europeans. All around the scale of values, his life experience. Beyond football, to overcome what he stands for. A serious thing, of course. But not so much as to make an existence worse. Lars understood this by breaking away from it. He has chosen to choose another life. The of him.