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Monaco. The glitz, the glamour, the sun, the millionaires, the life expectancy.

The home of Mikkel Beck.

The former Boro striker has called the cash-scorched principality home for the last 12 months, moving from Brussels where he'd spent the previous nine years.

Yet he's spent the previous fortnight in France - dotting around from stadium to stadium, his phone forever ringing, deals forever being discussed and thrashed out.

As he chats a voice which he'll be familiar with as he makes his way around France can be heard in the background.

"Do you mind if I call you back in a couple of minutes?", he asks. The sat-nav and the voice which is directing him from one game to the next has seemingly failed him in this instance.

It's the morning after a France group game where Beck was an interested spectator.

Lucas Digne was the player he went to watch but the 22-year-old didn't feature. He's yet to play a game in the tournament for the hosts.

Beck is equally as interested as in the 6ft1" powerhouse of a centre forward in Portugal's squad, Eder.

Both players are represented by Beck, who watches on with a vested interest as a football agent.

"Eder was on loan to Lille from January until now and we have just signed a permanent deal with Lille so that was already done before the Euros started," explains Beck, now 43.

"Lucas is a different story. I am looking to find a new club for him. He's under contract at PSG and was loan at Roma last season where he did really well.

"Now we want to either stay at Roma or go on to somewhere else so the European Championships are really important to him."

Beck is more than aware that those in his industry sometimes start on the back foot, that their reputations precede them.

He's not concerned.

"It all depends on how you work," he says.

"If you do things the right way and every night you can go to bed and look at yourself in the mirror and say that you have not done something wrong then there should be agents who get good press as well.

"At the end of the day, you have to put the interests of the players first all of the time."

It's a different role to the one he played at the European Championships 20 years ago.

Then he was part of a Denmark squad that included Peter Schmeichel and the Laudrup brothers. A Denmark squad that were defending champions. A Denmark squad that crashed out at the group stages after a draw against Portugal and a heavy defeat to Croatia.

By the time they beat Turkey in the final group game it was too late. There was no second chance for third place sides back then.

Beck partnered Brian Laudrup in the first game, walking out at Hillsborough to be greeted by almost 35,000 fans. The famous Sheffield stadium would host all three Denmark games.

Beck started the first, came off the bench in the second and didn't feature in the third. It was a disappointing tournament for a Denmark squad which wasn't shy of belief or characters.

"Schmeichel was a big character for sure, he had a lot of importance in that team," he says.

"The two Laudrup brothers were incredible also. What they did on the pitch was magical. We had a good team, an all-round good team.

"We went into that tournament believing we could maybe go quite far, but it never turned out like we wanted it to.

"This is how it happens. Sometimes tournaments are very difficult, you cannot really allow any slip-ups and you play lots of games in a short space of time. You know you have to be lucky with injuries and suspensions and everything and you need to have your top players on form.

"I have good memories. I was there in '96 and also at Euro 2000. I think it's the biggest thing for a footballer to play in a big tournament like the Euros or the World Cup.

"Everything really focuses on the tournament during these months and everyone is watching, you really feel how big it is when you are part of it."

Prying eyes from Teesside were certainly watching and monitoring Beck closely.

There was little point in him heading home to Denmark following their exit. He would soon be Boro bound - a deal agreed back in the April of that year to sign the promising frontman from Fortuna Koln, though it was a deal which would turn quite messy with the German club insistent they had a year's option on the 23-year-old's contract.

Read more An appreciation of Mikkel Beck

Beck's honest enough to admit he knew little about Boro when he heard of their interest. But he knew they were a club on the up and, of course, he knew Bryan Robson.

Growing up in Denmark, there was only ever one football game on TV each week. It was an English top flight game on a Saturday afternoon. Now he would feature in the league he'd grown up watching and admiring.

"I didn't know too much about Boro, no," he admits.

"But I knew Bryan Robson was the manager and that Nick Barmby and Jan Age Fjortoft had been there. And Branco also. And then Juninho came.

"It was a club that was starting to become a little bit famous and known outside of England. They were an interesting club and one of those clubs that you wanted to join.

"It was exciting. I think everyone will agree on that: the players, the fans. Those three seasons we had together were certainly not boring.

"There were lots of ups and downs but it was very exciting. We should never have gone down. Never. And at the end of the day we didn't go down, it was only because of those three points."

What could that team have gone on to achieve had they survived?

"I really don't know," he says.

"I think it was a good team and we were starting to get to know each other better because lots of new players were brought in and we had played together for a while. A team that plays together for a while can only get better.

"A lot was obviously said about all the players Boro signed but the English players were very, very important to that team. There was Stevey Vickers, Robbie Mustoe, Nigel Pearson. They were all impoirtant. Derek Whyte too.

"You can't have a team full of foreigners, you need to have some English players who know the Championship, who can give the team some English spirit that you need."

Three goals in his first four appearances - including a memorable strike against Newcastle - was a fine start to Beck's Boro career. He scored 11 in his first full season.

"I thought that was OK, it was quite good, and I set up a lot of goals so in general I was pleased."

Read more Mikkel Beck has his say on new Boro signing Viktor Fischer

He was learning about the English game all the time, learning about his own game as well.

And learning how to cope with a strike partner like Fabrizio Ravanelli. A delight on the pitch but hard work off it, says Beck.

"I mean we all know that we had our difficulties on a personal level but as a footballer he was incredible. He was very good, he was a winner.

"He didn't score all of his goals by coincidence. He really had a mentality that he wanted to score goals, he was hungry for goals.

"I think a young player like me at that time could benefit from playing alongside him."

Despite those differences with the striker known as the White Feather, Beck insists Robson's 1996/97 squad was together as one.

"I would like to think so, yeah.

"Of course, like in all squads, there was some friction but that's what you have to expect when you bring in so many players.

"You want them to gel straight away but it doesn't always work like that. But the team spirit was good."

While Ravanelli moved on following the relegation - but only after a farewell last minute goal in the first game of the Division One season against Charlton - Beck stayed put.

He wanted to build on his first season in the English game. He wanted to fire Boro back to the Premier League at the first time of asking.

And he felt he was doing exactly that. After scoring 14 goals in all competitions by the turn of the year, Beck couldn't understand Bryan Robson's thinking when the manager went out and signed three strikers, Marco Branca, Alun Armstrong and Hamilton Ricard midway through the season.

"I remember I had scored 14 goals in the first half of the season so if I had continued like that I would have been at nearly 30 goals for the season, so at that point I didn't understand (the signings)," he said.

"I didn't feel we needed another striker so to go out and buy three, I didn't really understand it.

"I am pretty sure we would have also got promoted if we hadn't bought them because we were doing really well until Christmas.

"But that was the choice from Bryan Robson and at the end of the day you respect that and get on with your football. It meant that suddenly there was an incredible amount of competition for places up-front."

There's an irony though. For while Beck didn't feel the signings of Branca, Armstrong or Ricard were necessary, he now regards one of those as the best frontman he ever played with at the club.

"Hamilton Ricard scored a lot of goals and was a very good player," he says.

"He started off a little bit slowly but I think it was just a matter of time as he got adjusted to English football.

"But when he started doing well he never looked back and I thought he was a very good striker.

"If we say that Juninho is a striker than I'd say that he was the best I ever played with.

"I really felt that Juninho and I, we had that kind of style of football that fitted together. We had a really good partnership and I really enjoyed playing with him.

"But if you'd say that Juninho wasn't a striker then I would probably say Hamilton Ricard.

"Of course, Ravanelli was the one who scored the most goals but I felt he was a little bit more difficult to play with.

"Hamilton Ricard was easier to play together with because we understood each other and we both knew what we wanted."

Beck rejects the suggestion that the three signings in the promotion winning season were the start of the end of his time at the club, and he did go on to make 32 appearances the following campaign before joining Derby County.

As the conversation drifts back to his current profession, talk turns to recruitment. Boro's recruitment.

Beck laughs off Boro's loose tabloid links with Falcao earlier this summer.

"When I was at the club they bought players like that every year," he says.

"If it was back in my time then I think Middlesbrough would have gone for some big names like Falcao but I'm not so sure it's the strategy now.

"Times have changed."

Indeed. Last time Boro won promotion Beck was a member of the squad. This time he'll monitor Boro closely, watching on from his adopted home in Monaco which he shares with his wife and two kids.

He's happy, he says. Enjoying life. He started work as an agent 12 years ago. He started with one player before quickly expanding his business and having up to a dozen on his books.

He's gaining players and experience all the time. Perhaps he'll serve Boro players instead of goals in years to come?

"I was pleased to see Boro win promotion," he says, "of course I was.

"They should be in the Premier League. They're a Premier League club and they spent too long in the Championship.

"Now they're back I'm really going to follow them closely and I hope they build on their promotion."