A week away from the presentation of the new Danish strategy and reorganisation it has become apparent that a restructuring of the top Danish League must be on the cards.

The former League Secretary has twice before proposed changing the structure of the Danish 1st division below the Premier Division. The reason for this is the lack of interest in promotion from the top clubs in the regional 2nd Division. This problem has two sides - partly the technical difference between the two divisions where the 1st division covers the whole country, and partly the financial problems that a regional club will face suddenly having to travel around Denmark. The proposed solution, a regional 1st division, was however rejected by the clubs as the clubs in the Copenhagen area feared they would be isolated as the ethnic proportion of players has become very high.

The present League Secretary suggests expanding the 1st division from the present 8 teams to 12 playing a single round tournament, but whether this will be carried is yet to be seen due to the financial burden to the new clubs. Perhaps the new association will increase the travel subsidies.

But what�s the problem after the 2005 season? Well, two clubs go down from the 1st division and are replaced by the winners of the two regional 2nd divisions. But in the 2nd division East the two top teams are barred from promotion, as the clubs do not have any youth teams, which left KB's 2nd eleven gaining promotion in third place. And in the west the top two teams have refrained from promotion. This gives the opportunity for Fredericia to stay up for the same reason for two years running, but we await the club board�s decision on this.

Fredericia have taken quite a beating during 2005 so I would think it will be unlikely they will stay up. So the likely result will be that the 1st division will be 7 teams in 2006 instead of 8, a situation which also happened in 2005 when Glostrup�s second team had to give up early due to a sudden lack of players.