“I WOKE UP TO FIND 16,000 EMAILS IN MY INBOX. THEY WERE ALL IN ENGLISH – DEATH THREATS AND INSULTS”
The first time I had to deal with death threats came nine months before Euro 2004. It was a qualifier between Denmark and Romania, where the visitors needed a win in their last game to qualify. Romania were the better team by miles too, and 2-1 up as the game entered four minutes of injury time. But they started time-wasting to an obscene level, with players walking really slowly for substitutions. I had to book one of them for taking so long over a corner, and kept telling them that I’d be adding that time onto the end, but they carried on.
You can guess what happened next: after 94 minutes and 36 seconds, Denmark scored to all but qualify at Romania’s expense.
They had nobody to blame but themselves, but the following day in Copenhagen, 5,000 of their fans protested outside the Swiss embassy against me. Romanian tabloids claimed that the penalty I’d awarded the Danes in the first half had been soft, and that their equaliser had been offside, but none of it was true.
Some media found my email address and published it. I received thousands of death threats, which was the first time I’d experienced anything like that. I was scared of what their fans might do if they saw me in Copenhagen, so I called the police and asked them to protect me because I had a really bad feeling about going home. Fortunately, nothing happened – but sadly it hadn’t been the last time.
Growing up, I’d dreamed of becoming a footballer. I wanted to play at San Siro
