The Union made official on Thursday the signing of Danish striker Mikael Uhre, who is coming to Subaru Park on a club record transfer fee.

That’s according to JT at the Inquirer:

“A source with knowledge of the deal said the Union paid Brøndby a $2.8 million transfer fee to sign Uhre, the top scorer in Denmark’s top league for the last two seasons. That easily breaks the Union’s transfer fee record, the $2 million paid for Jamiro Monteiro to France’s Metz in early 2020. Uhre led the Danish Superliga with 19 goals last season as Brøndby won their first title in 16 years.”

Bang bang! Get the fuck in! That’s what we say when a striker scores a goal.

By all accounts, this is one hell of a Union signing. The guy was the top scorer in a European league, for crying out loud. And it’s a good league. Denmark has clubs like Copenhagen and Midtjylland that are playing Europa League and Champions League, and constantly transferring players to bigger leagues. I’m old enough to remember when the Union were linked to dudes out of the Bulgarian third division and we called that ambitious. This really is not your grandmother’s Philadelphia Union. They’re a threat to win it all in 2022, and almost won it all this season despite having to play the MLS Cup semifinal without 11 players because of STUPID pandemic rules.

I digress.

Uhre is here and he already sounds like a Philly type of guy:

Uhre:

“I’m a guy who maybe I’m not the loudest, but I’m always gonna give 100%. Even though I’m a striker, I’ll also be tracking back and helping the team, because I think that’s the most important part of the game. You have to be a team. I’m gonna be a hard working striker and also scoring a lot of goals.”

Love it. That’s a real blue collar, lunch pail type of quote right there. He wants to score goals but he’s also willing to track back and defend and play through the system. He’s not gonna be one of those lazy-ass sulking strikers who complains whenever he doesn’t get the ball. Strikers can be absolute divas.

I did a little bit of Uhre investigating the other day, and came away with this observation:

There are also a lot of highlights of him pouncing on bad passes and jumping lanes, and to me that suggests he’s gonna be a good fit for the Union system if they can get Daniel Gazdag pressing anywhere close to Brenden Aaronson’s 2019 and 2020 level. Jim Curtin was recently on the It’s Always Soccer in Philadelphia podcast, and we talked about how the team switched up their approach a little bit because they didn’t have the personnel to high press the way they did the year before.

Uhre seems like a great signing. A low key, hard-working dude. He’s already on my list of top-five Danes of all time, which includes King Diamond, Lars Ulrich, Mads Mikkelsen, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.

I had another Dane on the podcast recently, a local coach and ref named Brian Kammersgaard, to break down the signing: