More on Mads “The Worm” Junker

:: snake

So apparently euro-footballer/wannabe grifter Mads Junker is quite the mechanic.

Our friend in Copenhagen, Jonas Hüttel, who covered the 2005 WSOP for Denmark's Ekstra Bladet, just gave us the full scoop on The Junker in response to our story about this star striker for Danish soccer team FC Nordsjaelland who’s been cheating his fellow teammates during games of texas hold’em.

From Jonas:

Alright. Mads Junker. It's a fantastic story.

First of all, he's not the best or the most well known Danish player. The club he is playing for is one of the smallest in the best Danish league, always fighting to avoid relegation, but Mads Junker is a very intelligent young man, up until now. He for instance used to be part of a debate-program on football (soccer) for Viasat Sport (which is the equivalent to ESPN) together with other prominent personalities in Danish football.

Late Friday evening the paper that I work at got an anonymous tip and Saturday we cracked the story. It was big news Sunday and we're still following the story.

This is what we know for sure through our sources:

Mads Junker and a lot of the players from his club FC Nordsjaelland had a regular game - mostly Hold'Em. They played all the time: After training, on the way to matches and so on. But the other day Mads was caught cheating and apparently at a meeting with the players involved he admitted that he'd been cheating for a year. They always played with two decks and from what we know (and our sources are good) Mads had quite the mechanic grip. When he was dealing he secured himself good cards and only shuffled the bottom of the deck.

How much money was involved is a harder question to answer. The club-owner went on national television stating that his player had made a mistake but it was only a small amount, like 50 dollars all together. It was hilarious to watch - any idiot could see that he was lying. You won’t find a professional football player gambling for a few dollars and if they were it wouldn't have been such a big deal if he was caught cheating. The real amount is more likely something like 5000-10.000 dollar - but foremost it's a breach of trust when the star-striker and 'second' captain of the team cheats his own team-mates. And that is also why some of the other players have told the media their version (anonymously) instead of keeping their mouths shut. And if Mads Junker hadn't been one of the most important players for the club he'd been kicked out for sure.

Thanks Jonas for the details. I tried reading all the stories that were coming out in the Danish newspapers, you know, with all the Danish I picked up during my week there last summer (words like "Helena Christensen, "Carlsberg" and "7-Eleven"), but I wasn't getting the full picture. By the way, apparently The Junker went on Danish television last night and apologized. Not sure if this is the bit. For all I know the Junker could be discussing the sociological implications of Tara Reid's newly supplemented junk-in-the-trunk

To our American audience, yes, this is European football and doesn't quite rise to the level of the Pete Rose/MLB row, the ASU point-shaving scandal, or the black eye to baseball after the 'Black' Sox story broke out, but it's intriguing nonetheless. While the Junker is possibly on his way to being a Danish Beckham (if only he could nail down the faux-hawk while nailing a hot, skinny famous, fake-breasted chick from a famously awful pop outift), his recent actions off the grass and on the felt show him to be more of a Worm, Rounders-style than a respectable footballer.