Although he’s playing on another continent more than 3,900 miles from home, forward Lasse Dahl found a place on the pitch for Pitt Men’s Soccer early in his true freshman season.
While on the attack the Panthers, currently the No. 1 team in the nation per the NCAA’s RPI metric, made it where they are because of precise and efficient passing, opening up gaps in their opponent’s defense with pinpoint passes in the middle of the pitch or bursting down the sideline—often with Dahl leading the charge on the right flank—before lifting a well-timed feed toward the net.
Dahl has appeared in all 15 of the Panthers’ matches this season, picking up two goals and six assists while making five starts and averaging 54 minutes per game. It’s a solid workload for a young player—especially one on a team with plenty of talented upperclassmen like the Panthers—and it’s impressive to see a true freshman become a seamless part of that chemistry.
Dahl described his ability to make an instant impact for the Panthers.
“I think [it’s] just the mentality, the way we play at Pitt. I like it very much and it fits me very well. Keeping possession of the ball, especially on the opposition’s half,” Dahl said. “I think [Pitt’s players have] the same mindset: know where we can hurt the opposition and know where we have to bring the ball to hurt them.”
Dahl said the Panthers’ coaching staff, both head coach Jay Vidovich and his assistants, emphasize that coordinated mentality when watching film or in practice. He added that their ability to cater to his strengths as a player have helped him find his feet in Division 1, especially as he began to check career first’s off his list.
“I’m really glad to be here with the coaches too. Trusting me, giving me playing time. I think they recognize what my qualities are as well, what I think about myself,” Dahl said.
“I’m really happy with the start. I know what I can contribute, and I felt like in the first games I showed it but didn’t really get a product of it. So I was just really happy when I started getting the first assist, of course the goal now.”
Intercontinental Recruiting
From the coaching staff’s perspective, Dahl’s role is a lot of trust to put in a young player… especially one who never set foot on Pitt campus before the start of summer practices. It’s an area where they have plenty of experience, though: of the 29 players on Pitt Men’s Soccer’s roster, 13 hail from Europe or South America.
Jay Vidovich said that the process of evaluating potential recruits from far-flung locations—deciding whether it’s worth the time and resources of taking an in-person visit to see them, much less extend an offer—requires plenty of homework. Often it’s an assistant who will make the official visit rather than Vidovich himself: in Dahl’s case, it was Assistant Coach Josh Oldroyd. During Oldroyd’s visit to Denmark, he watched Dahl play during a live game. The pair went out for dinner, and Oldroyd met with Dahl’s family.
“I trust my staff. They all have the same ambitions, they’re bought in to what we want to do. I trust their eyes, they’re as good as mine for sure. We also did a tremendous amount of homework before Josh went to go see [Dahl],” Vidovich said. “There’s video, there’s other people that we know so when Josh went to see him in person we already had a feeling of what we want to do and where we’d go with the offer on that.”
Finding a Match
Vidovich continued, detailing the network of talent evaluation that allows the Panthers to sift out talent from all over the world.
“We have contacts in different countries outside of who are identifying them for us who are also giving us input. So we have a network. That’s the final piece is to see them, to meet them, to know if they have the character and share the same values that we do,” Vidovich said.
“And that’s the key part is when you get those types of kids, that’s when you know you’ll have success one way or another. It may not be immediate, it may take a little bit, but when you have guys like that who meet the values of what you’re trying to do and have enough talent to join in, they bring quality… And you’re not always right, but Josh was on that one. I think we’ve hit very well on all our guys.”
On Lasse Dahl’s side, he had to choose a future home that he wouldn’t even have the ability to visit yet: no dorm room tours, no visit to the Panthers’ home field or training facility, no testing the waters by meeting future teammates… although he said that Olyroyd painted a good picture of what he could expect in Pittsburgh. To muddy the waters further, Pitt wasn’t the only team interested in Dahl, but he said he had an agent to help him sift through offers and other communication. Nevertheless, Dahl said that when Pitt offered him, it was an easy choice.
“I think I got a pretty good impression from the coaches and [Oldroyd], who helped me in Denmark,” Dahl said. “There were some other schools, but I wasn’t navigating it. It was more my agent in Denmark. But Pitt, when they said they wanted [me], that was it.”
The Danish Connection
Since arriving at Pitt, Dahl has been able to bond with another first-year Panther, senior midfielder Casper Grening, a Danish native who transferred in from Kentucky. Grening transferred in January 2024, while Dahl didn’t sign until June. Dahl said that communicating with Grening gave him another opportunity to get a glimpse of life in Pittsburgh.
“Meeting with Casper, we get along very well. I’m very happy to have him here, and when I first signed with Pitt I wrote with him a lot about how it was,” Dahl said. “Really good connection, obviously he’s from Denmark so that helps a lot.”
Dahl and Grening hail from different parts of Denmark: Dahl’s hometown, Vildbjerg, is in Jutland, the region of Denmark on the European mainland, while Grening is from Roskilde on the island of Zealand. Grening joked about the difference in the dialects they speak, but described how nice it is to talk about their shared identity while so far away from home.
“He’s a good guy. We get along very well. It’s nice to have someone to talk Danish with,” Grening said.
“Speaking English every single day is sometimes a little painful, so it’s sometimes nice to just relax and just talk in your native language, talk about things that he knows too that some Americans probably don’t understand—which is fair [on their part]. I really like having him on the team.”