Former Liverpool defender covers shortfall for team’s tripCharity: ‘There is no substitute for class, and Daniel has it’

The former Liverpool defender Daniel Agger has paid for Denmark to send a team to the Homeless World Cup in Chile.

Agger, who left Liverpool last month to return to his old club Brondby, covered a £2,100 shortfall in funding after being approached by organisers, allowing the squad to make the journey.

Frits Ahlstrom, of the charity Ombold, told Danish channel TV2: “I talked to him and said we still had to find 20,000 krone, and he said without hesitating: ‘I’ll give it to you.’ There is no substitute for class and Daniel has it on and off the field, as a player and as a person.”

The Homeless World Cup, which began in 2003, is held annually, and was last hosted in Poland, where Brazil were the winners.

In August PSG’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic donated £30,000 to send a Swedish team with learning difficulties to the INAS World Football Championship in Brazil.

The Swedish team’s manager, Stefan Jonsson, told Aftonbladet: “I spoke to Zlatan and asked if he could donate a shirt for auction and he said: ‘What the hell are you going to do with a shirt? How much is it to go?’ When we said what we needed, he asked for the account number and he deposited it.”