‘I blame myself for how things went at Southampton but it was the best thing that happened to me – it’s been a dream to be back in the Premier League’ Tottenham Hotspur’s ‘Magnet Head’ speaks to FourFourTwo

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Kevin Danso is now a Europa League winner after tricky Saints start

Kevin Danso celebrates with the Europa League trophy (Image credit: Getty Images)

“It’s been an amazing feeling to be back in the Premier League,” he tells FourFourTwo. “Growing up here and starting my football academy life here, Premier League football was always what you saw on the TV every weekend. It was always a dream for me to be in the Premier League, especially with a team like Spurs.”

Spurs with the Europa League trophy (Image credit: Getty Images)

Within months, he’d done what so many Spurs players had dreamed of doing over the past two decades – he’d won a trophy.

Danso was utilised as an extra centre-back in two key games, coming on as a late substitute as Spurs held on to a one-goal lead in the quarter-final at Eintracht Frankfurt, then doing the same during the final against Manchester United in Bilbao.

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“The lads were doing such a good job and I just had to go on and do my little bit to help,” he explains. “It was just running through my mind – ‘I can’t let them score’. The manager put me on to keep the lead, so that was the most important thing for me – whenever the ball came in and around my area, I was just going to make sure I got something on it and kept it away from our goal.

“It’’s always a good feeling to go on and help the team in any capacity. I was really happy to be a part of it.”

Arise, Sir Magnet Head

Thomas Frank (Image credit: Getty Images)

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“I didn’t know he’d said that until my friends and team-mates told me, but I take pride in defending and I cleared a lot of set pieces against Everton – it was a positive so I’ll take it!” Danso laughed when asked about the moniker.

His long throws have also been useful. “It’s a weapon I’ve always had, it’s a way to score goals – every aspect of football is important,” he says.

The Austrian has partnered Micky van de Ven in central defence for the last three league games, although captain Cristian ‘Cuti’ Romero has now returned from injury and replaced him in the line-up for Tuesday’s 4-0 win over FC Copenhagen.

“Everybody knows how much quality Micky and Cuti have, it’s tough, but when I do get the opportunities I just have to show that I’m a quality player, do the best that’s possible and help the team,” Danso says.

“The most important thing is that we push on as a team and I help with that. Personally of course you want to play every game, but you also understand that at this moment in time that Cuti and Micky are performing very well, and when I get my opportunity, I just have to play at least at the same level.”

Micky van de Ven (Image credit: Alamy)

“Not quite!” Danso laughs. “I’m not sure if many people can do that quite like he did – it was an amazing goal. As soon as he won the ball and started running, I was just like ‘Go, go, go!’”

World Cup in his sights

The World Cup (Image credit: Getty)

“Definitely – in football, anything is possible,” he says. “We showed a lot of resilience last season to win a trophy, despite a lot of injuries, a lot of things that didn’t go our way.

“We still managed to end it on a high – in football there are always highs and lows and the main thing is not always how you start, but how you finish.

Ralph Hasenhuttl (Image credit: Clive Brunskill)

“Sometimes you’ve just got to dig in. That’s what we did last season, and this season we want to achieve something similar, so we’ve got to dig in again.”

Danso’s own career has had highs and lows. He was full of optimism when he joined Ralph Hasenhuttl’s Southampton on a season-long loan in August 2019, with the south coast side having an option to buy.

That option wasn’t taken up – still only 20, Danso was sent off for two yellow cards on his home debut against Manchester United, and started just one more league game for the club. One of his final league appearances was as a half-time substitute in a famous 9-0 home loss to Leicester City. His stint on the south coast was a learning experience.

“One hundred per cent,” he says. “Before Southampton, at that stage of my career everything was very much on the up, and that was the first time that it didn’t really go my way.

Kevin Danso in action for Austria (Image credit: Emin Sansar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“It told me a lot about myself, and I do blame myself a bit because especially in those periods, you have to work even harder and search for something inside you to really push yourself.

“I feel like I didn’t quite do that. I was very young of course, but that was the lesson I learned. I think it was one of the best things that probably happened to me.”

Now, he’s also on the brink of fulfilling another lifelong ambition, by playing at the World Cup with Austria. “I feel like that’s very possible,” he says. Ralf Rangnick’s side lead their qualification group, with two matches to go.

“We’ve got games coming up against Cyprus and Bosnia to secure that place at the World Cup. It’s definitely the dream.”

Kevin Danso visits Tottenham Foodbank (Image credit: Tottenham Hotspur)

“It’s something that Spurs have been involved in since 2019 and I wanted to support in any way I could,” he says. “I wanted to come down and see what it’s about – they do amazing work, I’ve just helped package up some food for a family of four, to help families out who need it, which is important.”

Danso has explained that his parents grew up Ghana, where people relied heavily on the support of their communities, and he also recently became an ambassador for homelessness charity The Passage.

Kevin Danso lends his hand to the Tottenham Foodbank (Image credit: Tottenham Hotspur)

“I’ve got a charity in Austria and a charity in Ghana – I grew up in the UK so I was looking for something I could get involved in here,” he explains.

“Homelessness wasn’t something I was too familiar with, but I read about it and thought ‘OK, this charity is something amazing’. There’s a stigma around homelessness, that it’s about bad decisions that people make, but when I visited the charity, I found out that it’s not exactly like that.

“It’s not a choice, it’s not always bad decisions that lead to that, so people need to be aware of that and support charities like The Passage, to help eradicate homelessness. I spoke to some of the people that the charity is helping, and their stories are amazing.”