By the time Peter Madsen left his native Denmark for Germany, he had won three Superliga titles with Brøndby and had been awarded the first of his 13 full caps. In his best spell in the Bundesliga, he helped Bochum, one of Germany’s smaller clubs, to UEFA Cup qualification. When they were relegated in 2005, Peter stayed in the top flight by joining FC Köln. Unhappy there, and unable to score, he jumped at the chance to spend the second half of that 2005-06 season at Southampton, on loan.

As George Burley, recently installed as manager, strove to lift the Saints from the depths of the Championship to mid-table, he shuffled his pack of strikers, a Grzegorz Rasiak-Madsen pairing being his main choice for a couple of months. The slim-line Madsen, who considered himself

“at my best with the ball at my feet,”

felt that he complemented Raziak’s strength in the air. Having got a couple of goals, he revealed, in the match-day programme, that he would like to make the move permanent.

Instead, he had another goalless season back at Cologne, before returning to Brøndby on a five-year contract. After completing that contract out on loan, he duly retired in 2012.