Akademisk Boldklub
Akademisk Boldklub Gladsaxe is a Danish professional football club from Gladsaxe north of Copenhagen, currently playing in the third tier of Danish domestic football in the Danish 2nd Division.
The club was established on 26 February 1889, through a merger of Frederiksberg Studenternes Kricketklub and Polyteknisk Boldklub. AB is nine time Danish Champions, eight time Copenhagen Champions, one time Danish Cup Champions and six times Copenhagen Cup Champions, and the club is thus one of the most successful in Danish football.
The club has training and club facilities in Bagsværd north of Copenhagen and plays its home matches at Gladsaxe Stadium, also called Stade de Lundberg, named after one of the club's pioneers, Knud Lundberg.
Since the foundation, AB has played in a green and white kit and had an owl as mascot. The club's official fan club is named AB Forever and was founded in 1995.
AB is one of the oldest football clubs in Denmark and is originally from Copenhagen. Here the club had training facilities on Østerbro from 1903 to 1922. From 1923 to 1965 the club had training facilities on Nørrebro. In 1965, AB moved to Gladsaxe where the club belongs today. Most of the club's titles were won in the time in Copenhagen, especially in the 1890s and the 1940s.
The club participated in the foundation of the Danish Football Association in 1889 and has over the years developed many football players who have played on the Denmark national team, including Harald Bohr, Karl Aage Hansen, Knud Lundberg, Kresten Bjerre and René Henriksen. Harald Bohr's brother, the Nobel Prize winning physicist Niels Bohr, did not make it to the national team, but indeed played for the club, as a goalkeeper.
History
The foundation
Akademisk Boldklub was founded on February 26, 1889, through a merger of the two academic sports clubs Fredericia Studenternes Kricketklub and Polyteknisk Boldklub. Fredericia Studenternes Kricketklub was a cricket club founded in 1884 by graduating students from the Latin School in Fredericia. When they became students in 1883, they moved to Copenhagen to study at the University of Copenhagen. The following year, they founded the club so that they could play cricket again.Like most other clubs at the time, Fredericia Studenternes Kricketklub originally only had cricket on the program. However, from around 1887, football became more popular in Denmark as Frederik Markmann, chairman of the board of Københavns Boldklub, took the initiative to translate the laws of the English Football Association to Danish in collaboration with three clubmates and Holger Forchhammer from Fredericia Studenternes Kricketklub. The club got football on the program from then on and participated in Københavns Boldklub's Medal Football Competition.
Holger Forchhammer and his brother were key people in Fredericia Studenternes Kricketklub at that time. Holger Forchhammer took initiative to start a collaboration with Herlufsholm Kostskole, where Holger's father was the rector, to recruit talented players to the team. Holger also became board member of AB's first board and chairman of the National Olympic Committee and Sports Confederation of Denmark from 1897 to 1899, while Johannes became chairman of the Danish Football Association from 1894 to 1897.
With the introduction of football on the program, the club opened for admission from other schools than Fredericia Studenternes Kricketklub. Eventually, the number of Copenhageners in the club grew larger and the name of the club became unrepresentative of its member. Therefore, members of Fredericia Studenternes Kricketklub and Polyteknisk Boldklub were convened on February 26, 1889, for a joint meeting between the two clubs in order to arrange a merger. Polyteknisk Boldklub was a somewhat younger club from 1885 which consisted of students and graduates from Technical University of Denmark. The result of the meeting was a merger between the two clubs and the foundation of Akademisk Boldklub.
In relation to the merger, new requirements for becoming a member of AB were introduced. The admission requirement was that one had an entrance examination from a Scandinavian university or from the Technical University of Denmark. However, an exemption could be granted for this requirement if the board decided unanimously to register a member or if 15 members of the club recommended a person.
At the establishment of AB, the club got a new logo with an owl as a mascot. The owl is a symbol of wisdom and learning and has been the club's mascot since the foundation. The newly established club played in a green and white kit, as did the Fredericia Studenternes Kricketklub.
The early years
Shortly after the foundation, on April 1, 1889, AB moved to new premises on Østerbro in Copenhagen where the club during the year grew to have 104 active members and 15 passive members.On March 5, 1889, AB played its first official football match. The match was played at Blegdamsfælleden in Copenhagen, and AB won 2–0 against the opponent BK Frem.
In 1889, AB participated in the establishment of the Danish Football Association together with 21 football clubs from Copenhagen and five from the province. On April 27, 1889, AB won the Danish Football Association's first tournament, defeating the until then invincible club Københavns Boldklub. In the period 1890–1900, AB had great success and won the Copenhagen Football Championship eight times.
In 1890 AB played the first Danish-Swedish football match in the history when Halmstads BK was defeated 3–0 away from home.
Football was not yet played at schools at the time, and AB therefore started a junior department with the intention of recruiting talented young players. However, the department had to close again in 1897 due to the bad behavior of its members. In 1899, the club tried again and this time it had more success as the department's member count rose to 70 during the first year. The first two members of the new junior department were brothers Niels Bohr and Harald Bohr, who both later came to play on AB's first-team squad. Harald Bohr already debuted at AB's first-team squad at the age of 16, where he became known as the first dribble in Danish football and was dubbed Lille Bohr by the press. He always played with a white handkerchief in the pocket, which he used to measure the wind direction and strength before and during matches. Harald, who later became a world renowned mathematician, played four international matches with the Denmark national team during his career. Niels Bohr became more famous outside the football field as a Nobel Prize winner and in his work as a professor, which was illustrated in a match against German football team Mittweida Tecnicum. In the match, Niels Bohr played as a goalkeeper, and as the ball rarely came near AB's goal, he spent the time leaning against one of the goal posts. Suddenly, a long ball was kicked toward AB's goal, which the crowd expected Niels Bohr to collect. However, he did not respond before a spectator shouted at him and the ball had already gone into the goal. After the game, he admitted that his thoughts were on a mathematical problem that he had attempted to solve by making calculations on the inside of the post.
Getting a pitch on Østerbro
In 1902, AB set up a work committee aimed at making AB a pitch owning club like neighboring club Københavns Boldklub and B93 had just become. The committee collected DKK 60,000 for the financing of the facilities, which came primarily from interest free bond loans from supporters of the club. In autumn 1902, the club rented six acres of land at Lammefælleden on Østerbro in Copenhagen by Copenhagen Municipality for the establishment of the new training facilities, which was put into service already in 1903.Shortly after the establishment of the new training facilities, AB also got a new home ground. Interest in sports was increasing in the early 19th century, and for this reason, the mayor of Copenhagen Jens Jensen in 1906 presented a proposal for the establishment of a sports park, which was granted DKK 1,264,450 for the construction of. In 1911, Københavns Idrætspark was completed and the facility became home to theDenmark national team and several Copenhagen football clubs, including AB.
AB's football game developed drastically as the club went from the uneven grounds they had played on so far to good fields on the new facilities. The good results AB had achieved so far in the Copenhagen Football Championship, however, did not survive in the period after the move to Østerbro. A highlight in the period after moving to Østerbro was when the team played 2–2 against professional Middlesbrough F.C. from England. In 1912, the poor results reached a new low point when AB ended last in the domestic tournament and had to play a relegation match against Østerbros Boldklub. AB won the relegation match 3–1 and was thus rescued from relegation.
In the 1910s, the results began to improve again, and in 1914, AB participated in its first Copenhagen Cup final, but lost 3–4 to KB. In 1919, the luck eventually turned when AB won its first Danish Championship after defeating B 1901 3–0 in the final. KBU's tournament, which led to the final of the Danish domestic football tournament, was won in a convincing way with 11 wins and only one defeat and a goal score of 46–16. In 1921, AB again won the Danish Championship when AGF was defeated 3–0 by a team consisting of many of the same players who had won the championship two years earlier.
During the years on Østerbro, AB and BK Frem collaborated on arranging so-called "English matches", as KB and B93 had also done it where professional foreign clubs were invited to a football tournament in Copenhagen. The English matches generated large spectator revenues for the arranging clubs due to the great interest in seeing the professional English teams.