Hojlund: 'Without football I'd have been a bricklayer like my father'

Rasmus Hojlund says he would have followed his father into bricklaying had football not worked out. The Napoli striker gave the answer during a session with eight young fans of the Danish national team, filmed for the federation's official channels.

In Napoli there's also the language barrier, we speak Italian when we train, and then it's very hot, which isn't something we have in Denmark.

Early days

He grew up in Horsholm, coached for years by his father, before three or four seasons at Brondby and a professional debut at Copenhagen. The breakthrough came when Atalanta signed him. 'They bought me, and after a couple of games I scored a goal and set up another. Then the head coach called me out of nowhere and asked if I wanted to join the national team for the Nations League games against Croatia and France.'

His Denmark debut was 'surreal', he said. He suddenly found himself team-mates with Christian Eriksen, one of his boyhood idols.

Country versus club

Hojlund draws a clear line between his two shirts. For Denmark the attachment is unconditional — 'I always hope it goes well, even when I'm not called up' — while at club level the calculation is different, because there he is also playing 'for personal success' and wants to be on the pitch every week.

Asked to pick a favourite among the stadiums he has played in, he struggled, naming Old Trafford and the Maradona, 'where I play now', alongside San Siro and Bayern Munich's Allianz Arena. One detail from his career: he has never been sent off, which he imagines must be 'annoying', carrying 'a bit of pain' and the weight of responsibility.

Asked which of all his clubs he prefers playing for, his answer was direct: Napoli. But he listed a long string of differences from training with the national team, from language to heat to the tactical details that change from one coach to another — a subject that also touches on the current Allegri era, with the head coach having arrived at Napoli at the start of the summer.

Souvenirs from the dressing room

With the serious talk out of the way, Hojlund enjoyed sharing dressing-room stories. Among the shirts he has swapped, he keeps Cristiano Ronaldo's, obtained through a team-mate, along with those of Toni Kroos and Luka Modric. Ronaldo is his declared idol, 'for the mentality'. His stated goal, though, is with Denmark: lifting a trophy, whether at the Euros, the World Cup or the Nations League.

The interview lands as Napoli try to find their balance up front. Last summer the club had looked at a different type of striker to the ones already in the squad, Hojlund included, before budget constraints tied to UEFA's financial parameters forced them to give up the pursuit. The Dane remains the alternative to Lucca in attack, with the team tenth in the table and away to Fiorentina on Sunday 20 September.