Shock, horror! FCK is the least Danish football club!

I was amused to see the headlines in the newspaper this week which announced that F.C. København, Denmark's most successful football team, is the least Danish club! This is by virtue of the fact that only 4 out of 10 players have a Danish passport.

How can this be a surprise? The population of Denmark represents .01% of the world's population. So, by excluding your club from 99.9%of the world's football talent, you are bound to do badly. In Lyngby Football Club, which props up the league table, only 4% are non-Danes.

This is reflected in industry: How do Danish companies expect to be competitive in a global market when they only access .01% of the global talent pool?

Denmark needs non-Danes to come and work here. There are several reasons why. One is stated above. One is demographic - there are simply not enough young Danes to fill the positions. But the third reason is most compelling.

Economic.

It has been said that every Danish child born today is a loss-making business. This is because of the long (free) education (nothing wrong in that!), a relatively short "window" when they are earning, and a potentially very long retirement. The years where taxes are being paid are not many relative to the years where the citizen is on some form of welfare. Hence a loss.

Let us take a typical non-Dane. Aged 35 with a couple of kids. He or she comes here for a job, where the salary is DKK 70K and the tax is 26% + 8% AMB. His education was paid by someone else. Denmark has gained this asset FREE OF CHARGE. His or her kids will most likely go to an international school. The non-Dane stays for 5 years, paying some DKK 1.4 million in tax. He is buying local goods and services. She leaves this country without being a future burden on society - no hospital costs, old-age care or state pension. While he is here, he has probably contributed to the profits of the company he worked for, because it is highly unlikely that she will be working in the public sector. Plus the gains from probable exports of goods and services.

Altogether a good business for Denmark; "en skide go' forretning" as they would say.

So why doesn't the Danish Government want to use the resources already in place to make Denmark an attractive place for clever, highly-qualified non-Danes to come here, namely the non-Danes that live here? Answer: I have no idea.

The British Olympic Team will have to participate in every discipline at the 2012 Olympics. This has meant organising a handball team, which is otherwise totally unknown in the UK. So, what did they do. Recognising that Denmark is the leading handball nation, they got some Danes over to help them out. Good thinking. They won't win, but they had the right approach.

A similar approach should be adopted here, to use the resources here to help make Denmark an attractive place for non-Danes. Cut down on the bureaucracy, provide better information in other languages at municipal level and show small and medium enterprises how they can greatly benefit by making some adjustments to their work cultures.

In this way, everyone is a winner. Just like with FCK: The team is happy, the fans are happy and the country is for the most part proud when FCK does well in the Champions League.