'We are allowing them to be stars' - FC Copenhagen Women make mark

FC Copenhagen may be the new kids on the block in women's football, but they have already made a big impression both on and off the pitch.

One of Scandinavia's most successful men's clubs launched their women's side earlier this year, entering a team into Denmark's third tier.

Four games into the season they have won all four games, scored 16 goals and conceded just once.

Their first home game of the season attracted 5,165 fans, setting a new attendance record for a women's game in Denmark by more than doubling the previous one.

"To be honest I am very rarely moved by a match," said Copenhagen's chief executive Jacob Lauesen.

"But this is a stadium with normally 100 people, there have not been 1,000 fans here for the last 10 years.

"We needed to rent additional toilet capacity and we had to open the back stand which hasn't been used for 20 years. We had to get a blacksmith to open the emergency exit because nobody knew where the lock was."

Copenhagen's women's team has been launched in the same way their men's team was back in 1992 - by merging with another club.

Their hopes of entering a team straight into Denmark's top female division were rejected, so Copenhagen linked with local grassroots club FC Damso and launched the new club at tier three under their licence.

The current squad consists of players on semi-professional or voluntary contracts, but the club want a full-time set-up as soon as possible and aim to be playing in Europe within five years.

Much of that depends on their commercial success off the pitch, which centres around using partners who are willing to tailor their approach to the women's team.

"Too many teams around Europe are trying to make a bad copy of the men's team under the excuse of a one-club mentality," said Lauesen.

"We want to do things differently."

A local community-driven sportswear brand creates bespoke shirts for Copenhagen's women's team.

Their kit launch - held during Copenhagen Fashion Week - attracted a number of high-profile celebrities and influencers, including actress Lily Collins, who attended the event in the same week as the release of the latest series of her hit Netflix show Emily in Paris.

"We had a meeting with fans the day after the launch and they accused us of spending too much money on celebrities," said Lauesen.

"We only spent the value on a shirt. Everyone came because they pulled into it, not because we are pushing it.

"That's the cool thing here. We see that Copenhagen as a city attracts so many world-famous ambassadors. We have created a community where we have a lot of musicians and actors following the club.

"We have seen a tremendous start and people want to be involved with the women's team because it is perfect in its time. I for sure think we can create some kind of a movement."

The women's kits have proved hugely popular and Copenhagen's head of women's football, Rebecca Steele, said the support has been overwhelming.

"The time for women's football is now," she said. "We really feel we have the whole city behind us.

"When I saw a girl for the first time wearing the women's shirt on the street of Copenhagen, that was a very special moment. The symbol of the women's team all around Copenhagen is very moving for us all.

"We are hoping for succeeding both on and off pitch. It's still a football club, we still have to win the games. But off pitch we need to build a brand, we need to build the business, we need to show all clubs abroad that women's football can be a business in itself."

It was Steele who spent a significant amount of time in the early days of the project meeting with clubs around the Copenhagen area to find the right side to merge with.

"We had a lot of conversations and FC Damso was the best for us because we can build it from the bottom. It is not the easiest way but it is the best way because we can do it with respect for the existing club that we are building upon.

"We had a lot of conversations with them, we listened a lot to their wishes for this project. One player said to me: 'This is not about you and me, it's about all the girls around Copenhagen and we need to do this for them.' That was very well said."

While Lauesen said now is not the time for the women's team to play at Parken Stadium, that is the ambition one day.

FC Copenhagen have big plans to raise the profile of their women's team and if the opening four weeks are anything to go by, their future is set to be incredibly bright.

"We are allowing these girls to be stars, even though they are playing in the third-best league," Lauesen said.

"This is the brand and the dream that every girl and boy should be able to dream about playing in Parken and playing with the lion on the chest. We wanted to make it special for girls.

"They are taking it on their shoulder that they are going to show people in Copenhagen and people in Denmark that this is an attractive product, this is not something to be ashamed of, this is not a waste of time like the way football fans have sometimes talked about women's football."