FC Copenhagen

FC Copenhagen offer something that is genuinely rare and genuinely valuable: a proper big-club matchday, with real atmosphere and regular European nights, in a city that is about as easy, safe and pleasant to visit as anywhere in the world. After a run of intense, complicated grounds, FCK is the gentle one, and that is a feature, not a knock.

The club is young by the standards of the giants, formed in 1992 by the merger of two older Copenhagen sides, KB and B1903, and it has since become the most successful club of the Danish Superliga era, with more league titles than anyone since 1991 and a steady habit of qualifying for Europe, where Parken has hosted some famous nights against the biggest clubs on the continent. They play in white, they are nicknamed the Lions, and they are the establishment club of the Danish capital.

The ground, Parken, is also the Danish national stadium, where the beloved national team plays, and it has a retractable roof and doubles as one of the country's biggest concert venues. It holds around 38,000, and while it is a tidy modern arena and no crumbling cathedral, it has a real singing heart, and on a European night or a derby it makes a proper noise.

Getting there

Copenhagen makes this simple. Parken sits in Østerbro, a smart residential district a short way north of the centre, and the M3 Metro, the driverless city ring, drops you a few minutes' walk away at Trianglen, Vibenhus Runddel or Poul Henningsens Plads. The Østerport S-train and regional station is also a walk from the ground. Honestly, in a city this compact and this walkable and cycle-friendly, plenty of people simply stroll or hire a bike out from the centre. Driving is the one thing not to do, as parking is scarce.

Making a day of it

The area right by the ground has the club's own Parken Sports Bar, on Øster Allé by the B stand, open through matchday from noon, and Østerbro around it is a pleasant, café-lined neighbourhood for a relaxed pre-match. But the real pleasure is that the whole of central Copenhagen is your pre-match, and it is a wonderful city to spend a day in.

Most visitors base themselves in the centre and drift out closer to kickoff. The old harbour at Nyhavn, with its painted houses and quayside bars, is the postcard spot for a drink, and there are football-friendly pubs along Vesterbrogade and through the Vesterbro and Kødbyen districts for something livelier. The Danish matchday snack to seek out is the pølser, the classic red street hot dog loaded with crispy onions, remoulade and pickles from a pølsevogn cart, with smørrebrød and good beer if you would rather sit down. Eat and drink your way through the centre, then take the short metro hop or the walk north to Parken; the whole thing is refreshingly stress-free.

Inside, and where the noise is

The singing home end is Sektion 12, the standing stand behind one goal in the B stand, and it is where the atmosphere lives: unreserved standing, continuous singing and flags from the club's most committed support, with a minimum age of fifteen to go in. If you want to be part of the noise and you are up for standing and singing for ninety minutes, that is the stand to pick. The A stand is the main side and the C stand the big season-ticket side, and away fans are housed in the opposite end.

The honest calibration is friendly rather than fearsome: for a routine Superliga game Parken is pleasant and moderately lively, and for a big European night or the derby it genuinely rocks. It is not one of the world's great intimidating cauldrons, and it does not pretend to be; it is a well-run, welcoming, good-fun matchday with a proper singing section, which for a lot of visitors is exactly the point.

This is the Champions League anthem ringing round Parken:

Watch on YouTube ↗

The derby, and the one intense day

The exception to all this easygoing charm is the Copenhagen Derby against Brøndby IF, the biggest match in Danish football and a real rivalry: FCK the central establishment club, Brøndby the club of the working-class western suburbs, with decades of genuine needle, big tifos and a hard edge to the support on both sides. It is the one FCK fixture that sells out fast, gets banded and restricted, and carries a serious atmosphere and a serious police operation. If your trip lands on it, it is a fantastic thing to see, but treat it with more care than the usual friendly Parken outing and keep colours sensible.

The songs

FCK's support, led from Sektion 12, sings throughout, a mix of Danish terrace anthems and the familiar European ultra repertoire, and the standing end keeps the noise rolling in a way the seated stands do not. It is a modern, organised singing culture rather than a century-old folk tradition, fitting for a club born in the 1990s, but it does the job, and a full Parken under the roof on a European night has a real lift to it.

Getting a ticket

This is one of the easiest big-club tickets in Europe, which rounds off the theme. FCK sell single-match tickets online through the official site in English, and for an ordinary Superliga game a visitor can readily get one, often cheaply, right up to close to matchday. If you want the atmosphere, choose Sektion 12; if you would rather sit, the side stands are simple to book.

The one to plan ahead for is, again, the Brøndby derby, which sells out quickly, is price-banded and comes with restrictions. Some high-risk European nights carry the same rules, with no neutral seating and colours restricted to your own section, so for those buy into the right end and leave rival colours at the hotel. For the derby, buy the moment tickets go on sale. Otherwise Denmark is a straightforward, English-friendly, honest place to buy a football ticket, with none of the membership walls or bureaucratic hoops of the harder grounds; the basic advice for buying a ticket abroad is the whole of it here, so buy direct from the club and turn up.

One last thing

Take FCK as the easy one, and enjoy it as such. Spend the day in one of the loveliest cities in Europe, ride the spotless metro or walk out to Parken, get into Sektion 12 if you want to sing or a side stand if you want to watch, and save your extra caution only for the Brøndby derby. It is proof that a great football day out does not have to be an ordeal, and after some of the more intense grounds in the game, that is a genuine pleasure.

Ticket rules, prices and derby restrictions can change; check anything time-sensitive the week you travel, and buy through the club.