Kevin Danso is back in the Premier League to save Tottenham's season

Kevin Danso’s loan spell with Southampton during the 2019-20 season started perfectly.

Danso, who was only 20 at the time, made his debut in the unfamiliar position of left-back in a Premier League fixture against Brighton, which Southampton won 2-0. The following week, he faced a Manchester United side that included Marcus Rashford, Paul Pogba and Juan Mata. The defender’s beautifully weighted right-footed cross was headed past David de Gea by Jannik Vestergaard as Southampton recovered from conceding early to claim a point.

But then, with just over 15 minutes remaining, Danso lunged into a reckless tackle on Scott McTominay and received a second yellow card. He never recovered from that mistake and only made four more league appearances for Southampton, including coming on as a half-time substitute in the grisly 9-0 defeat to Leicester City, before he returned to parent club Augsburg. Danso’s final appearance for Southampton was in a 1-1 draw with Tottenham Hotspur in a fourth-round FA Cup tie in January 2020.

Five years later, the Austria international has been given a second shot at the Premier League by his opponents that day. Danso nearly joined Wolverhampton Wanderers last weekend before Spurs swooped to sign him on loan from French side Lens. The deal includes an obligation to buy for €25million (£20.8m, $26m), with a contract that will run until 2030.

In an ideal world, the 26-year-old would be given time to build relationships with his new team-mates, but Radu Dragusin’s anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury and Cristian Romero’s slow recovery from a quad issue means he is needed immediately. Micky van de Ven returned from a hamstring injury against Elfsborg last week but will not feature in tonight’s Carabao Cup semi-final second leg against Liverpool because head coach Ange Postecoglou wants to be “conservative” with the defender’s recovery.

Postecoglou confirmed Danso will feature at Anfield and could even start. If he helps Spurs reach Wembley, he will become an instant hero. He would also have taken a pretty big step towards proving any doubters wrong.

Danso was born in the Austrian city of Voitsberg to Ghanaian parents. He has two older brothers, Josef and Emmanuel, and the entire family moved to Milton Keynes when he was six. During their childhood, they would play five-a-side football games after church and on concrete pitches in tight cages. Danso started playing up front for a local team before he joined Reading’s academy with Josef. He only stayed with Reading for six months before moving to MK Dons’ under-nines side.

Danso was in MK Dons’ academy at the same time as future Spurs midfielder and England international Dele Alli. Danso is two years younger than Dele, but they crossed paths as he was regularly pushed up into older age groups. Dan Micciche was MK Dons’ assistant academy manager at the time and worked closely with the pair.

“Kevin was very driven and a winner on the pitch, but away from it, he was humble, caring and polite,” Micciche, now player development lead coach at Everton, tells The Athletic. “He was an early developer physically, but a late developer technically. So we had to make sure that he didn’t just get away with things because of his physicality and that we challenged him in different ways.

“We would put players on different-sized pitches based on their needs and maturation. Kevin’s age group was athletic and quick. They would play Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea and win comfortably because they had bigger pitches. So when we played at home, we would put them on one of the smaller pitches because it meant their first touch had to be good.

“Sometimes we would go to games with no substitutes or one player less. I told them: ‘We are doing this because at some stage in your careers, you’re going to have to play with 10. We want you to be good at defending outnumbered and attacking outnumbered’. Kevin would receive the ball and have two players on him. He would have to master the ball and combine with people.”


Micciche worked with Danso and Dele Alli while assistant academy manager at MK Dons (Nick Potts/Getty Images)

MK Dons encouraged their academy stars to play futsal, a version of football that originates in South America and is mainly played indoors on hard courts with smaller balls. Matches are contested between two teams of five players on small pitches and it encourages close control and skill. Danso’s new team-mate Archie Gray has benefited from playing futsal, too.

One of the other techniques Micciche used to challenge Danso and his peers was a sin-bin rule. If players failed to follow instructions in training, they would be temporarily ejected. The idea was for them to learn not to panic under pressure.

“If Kevin booted the ball off the pitch or had an opportunity to shoot with his left foot but cut back onto his right, he would walk off the pitch because he knew what was coming next,” Micciche says. “It would only be for two minutes. It was an opportunity for him to reflect on what he should have done better. We sometimes did that on a matchday so there would be a consequence for the team.

“He played all over the pitch as well because our philosophy was, from nine to 12, you need to experience every position. It helps to develop a 360 understanding of the game and we can learn more about their characteristics. At 15, he could play as a box-to-box midfielder or at centre-back, but when he made his second appearance for Austria’s under-15s, he played up front and scored twice against Northern Ireland.”

It was no surprise, then, that Stephan Schwarz, Augsburg’s former technical director, spotted Danso at a tournament with Austria and decided to pursue a deal. Danso moved to Germany at 15, but FIFA rules prevented him from playing competitively for over a year. Part of the reason he joined Augsburg was because of the educational opportunities. They arranged for him to go to a private school to complete his GCSEs and an International Baccalaureate.

In March 2017, Danso became the youngest player, at 18 years and 165 days, to make an appearance in the Bundesliga for Augsburg when making his debut in a 2-2 draw with RB Leipzig. His task in that game was to mark Timo Werner, now his team-mate at Tottenham.

Danso made nearly 50 appearances in all competitions for Augsburg before he joined Southampton on the final day of the summer 2019 transfer window.

Southampton’s recruitment department liked his aggression and thought he possessed the ability to play at a higher level. He performed well across a series of data metrics, but there was some concern about his concentration levels. Danso, like other young defenders, could be naive in certain situations and was guilty of making erratic decisions. He would sometimes be over-eager and too aggressive with his tackling, which is what happened against Manchester United.

It did not help that he missed out on pre-season and the opportunity to properly adapt to manager Ralph Hasenhuttl’s aggressive, energetic tactical approach.


Danso’s spell at Southampton only brought fleeting success (Matt Watson/Getty Images)

In an interview with The Athletic in June 2022, Danso admitted he was partially to blame for his miserable spell on the south coast. “It was my first time back in England for five years and I spent a lot of time with my friends and maybe not enough time focusing as I did in Germany,” he said. “At the same time, when you are playing out of position and things like that, it all adds up to things not going your way. But I can’t just put all the blame on external factors because there are players who come, play out of position and still excel.

“I wanted it to work out, but when you play out of position you maybe need the extra focus that I didn’t have. I should have concentrated more and read the game more. I tried to do that, and when it started well, I took a bit of a back seat and became complacent. I needed to invest a little bit more to ensure it went in the direction I wanted it to.

​​“I had never played left-back professionally, but was doing so, then three weeks later (Hasenhuttl) decided to play me as a right-back against Bournemouth. I had just become used to playing on the left and then I was switched to the right. In that game against Bournemouth (Southampton lost 3-1 and Danso was replaced at half-time), Bournemouth realised I was playing out of position and exploited it really well. Callum Wilson and Dominic Solanke overloaded on my side.

“As a manager, Ralph would have seen what was happening and I don’t blame him for taking me off. The biggest problem was not playing enough games as a centre-half because I wasn’t able to show what I could do.”

Danso returned to Augsburg and spent the following season on loan with Fortuna Dusseldorf in the German second division. It was a huge drop-off from 12 months before when he was playing against elite players in some of the best stadiums in the world. In an interview with Rising Ballers, released earlier this week, Danso said his time with Fortuna Dusseldorf served as a “wake-up call”.

“The first few games didn’t go well because I was playing with a chip on my shoulder,” he said. “(Thinking) ‘I shouldn’t be here. My level is the Premier League. Why am I here?’. When you take your foot off the gas, that is what happens. The minute I realised I have to be head and shoulders above everyone in the league was when we went to play — and no disrespect to them — Wurzburger Kickers. You dream as a kid to be playing at Old Trafford, Etihad and Anfield and here I am playing at the Wurzburger Kickers stadium. From that point on, my head was screwed on and I had a really good rest of the season.”

Danso only missed two league games for Fortuna Dusseldorf as they finished fifth and in August 2021 he moved to Lens permanently. He predominantly played as the central defender in a back three under Franck Haise and Lens finished a point behind champions Paris Saint-Germain during the 2022-23 season.

Danso played six times for them in the Champions League last season, including a 2-1 victory over Arsenal, and made three appearances for Austria at the European Championship. In their opening game, France forward Kylian Mbappe broke his nose after colliding with the defender’s shoulder.


Danso in Champions League action against Arsenal last season (Denis Charlet/AFP via Getty Images)

In August, Danso was on the verge of joining Roma, but the move broke down. Danso had been convinced to join the Italian side by then-head coach Daniele De Rossi and their sporting director Florent Ghisolfi, who signed Danso in his previous role at Lens, but there were concerns following his medical.

“It was the longest medical I had done in my life, it took an extremely long time, which I thought at the time was a bit fishy anyway,” Danso told Rising Ballers. “During my heart scan, they said they discovered I have an irregular heartbeat, which now I know and have been told by many cardiologists is pretty normal in human beings and professional athletes.

“They said because of that I didn’t pass the medical and they couldn’t sign me. In the moment, it was sad to hear that and very shocking to hear that I could possibly have a heart condition that I hadn’t heard of before. That threw a spanner in the works and the deal didn’t get done.”

Danso remained with Lens and missed five Ligue 1 games while he was being tested. He travelled to London to be assessed by Professor Sanjay Sharma, who worked with Brentford on their deal to sign Christian Eriksen in January 2022 six months after he suffered a cardiac arrest playing for Denmark, and Dr Magdi Saba. According to Danso, their tests “proved there was nothing abnormal or wrong with me”.

Will Still replaced Haise as Lens’ head coach last summer and completely changed their tactical approach. They line up with a traditional back four and man-mark across the pitch, which meant Danso was expected to aggressively pursue strikers. He has experience of playing in different systems so should easily adapt to Ange Postecoglou’s style. Danso can speak multiple languages including English, German, French and Twi, which will help him to communicate with his new team-mates.

Danso has had a similar journey to Spurs’ club-record signing Solanke. They both had an opportunity in the Premier League when they were younger but had to drop down a division to gain more experience. Solanke’s recovery from multiple setbacks at the beginning of his career is one of the reasons Postecoglou wanted him.

“I got a real sense he had a burning desire to take his football to another level and challenge himself at a big club,” Postecoglou said about Solanke in August. “We have got him at a good time. He has had to work his way back up, which is a good thing.” Danso’s character appealed to Spurs, too.

“(Kevin’s) had a strong career, but he’s at an age now where he really wants to kick on,” Postecoglou said after Sunday’s victory over Brentford. “He’s got all the attributes we look for, he’s really strong one-on-one, he’s quick, he’s dynamic, he wants to play on the ball. He’s just at a stage of his career when he’s really determined to kick on now and make an impact. I think it’ll be a lift for the whole group.”

Danso faces a testing week, with Liverpool and then an FA Cup fourth-round tie against Aston Villa on Sunday. The self-described “gladiator” will relish the challenge of finally playing at Anfield five years later than he expected to.

(Top photo: Richard Sellers/Allstar via Getty Images)



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