AS a proud Dane, Peter Lovenkrands could hardly believe it when his nation looked to their Scandinavian rivals Norway to transform their fortunes this summer when veteran coach Egil Olsen retired.

Not only that, they went for a Norwegian who used to be Norwegian national team manager.

That man is Age Hareide, the coach who proved to be Ronny Deila's nemesis with Malmo, and while he got off to a good start with a 2-1 win against Iceland on Thursday night the former Rangers winger believes he has some work to do to win over a sceptical Danish support.

"It was a bit controversial," said Lovenkrands. "I was surprised. My friends and family back home weren't happy about it - personally I hoped they'd push for Michael Laudrup.

"He knows about everything and he's a name. But they went another way. Maybe he'll surprise me and he'll do fantastically. But I just don't feel he's been enough places to convince me until I see results.

"He did well with Malmo, to be fair," the former Rangers winger added. "But club football and international football are completely different. He was Norway national team coach which didn't help him coming to Denmark either. But if he gets results, the Danish people won't care."

Like the Czechs, who Scotland overcame in Prague on Thursday night, Lovenkrands feels this Denmark side lack the star quality of previous vintages. The obvious exceptions to the rule are stand-out Leicester goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel and Tottenham midfield ace Christian Eriksen, while he feels the jury is still out on Celtic centre half Erik Sviatchenko.

"He [Svitachenko] still has a lot to prove so it'll be interesting to see how he copes with his move," said Lovenkrands.

"I've not really seen enough of him to say whether I rate him but I'm intrigued to see how he copes."

Denmark lost out in the reckoning for Euro 2016 when they finished third behind Portugal and Albania, then crashed out via a comfortable play-off defeat to another of their Scandinavian rivals Sweden. At least, on the face of it, they now face an achievable World Cup group featuring Romania, Poland, Montenegro, Armenia and Kazakhstan.

"There has been big disappointment in Denmark because you could see the difference in class between Denmark and Sweden in the play-offs and it didn’t used to be that way," said Lovenkrands.

"We all expected to qualify, having seeing the group in which we were drawn. It was one we definitely should have qualified from, but we threw it away - we drew 0-0 at home to Albania and 0-0 away too, that wouldn’t have happened with the team we used to have three or four years ago.

"It’s not the same quality.

"Kasper Schmeichel has been fantastic for Leicester and also the Danish national team while Christian Eriksen has been struggling for the national team but doing well for Tottenham," he added.

"I believe that’s a result of the players he has around him at Spurs, in comparison to the players around him with the Danish national side. The defender Simon Kjaer is doing well at Fenerbahce as well so we have players there but only three or four when we used to have a whole team - when I was there I couldn’t get into the team because we had players performing for the top clubs in Europe."

Lovenkrands reckons Gordon Strachan's Scotland have a head start on the Danes and makes them slight favourites for the match.

"Over the last couple of years I think Strachan's done a great job, they've been solid and hard to beat," he said.

"It will be interesting to see how they cope against a Denmark team who are struggling, because Denmark have had the upper hand against Scotland the last couple of times we've met."

Lovenkrands was a second-half substitute in a 1-0 win against Scotland at Hampden, the goal coming from Ebbe Sand.

"I didn't get booed by the crowd - here I was fine, though in Dublin I got booed!" he recalls.

Peter Lovenkrands was visiting Holyrood Secondary School in Glasgow to promote the Kids Group Deal for the forthcoming Vauxhall International Challenge Match between Scotland and Denmark at Hampden Park.