COPENHAGEN - The English flag depicted with a loaf of toast and two stripes of Danish bacon, a mainstay on English breakfast tables, featured on the front page of The Sun newspaper on Wednesday ahead of the Euro 2020 semi-final between England and Denmark.
"Bring home the bacon, lads," the tabloid said on its front page.
The newspaper also placed the same picture as an advertisement in Danish tabloid BT with the text: "We eat you for breakfast."
Denmark is a major supplier of bacon to the UK.
In response, BT placed an advertisement in The Sun depicting Vikings taking up arms in front of a Danish flag with the text: "It's not coming home... We're coming home!"
The ad refers to when Vikings conquered England some 1,000 years ago and to England's 1996 soccer anthem "Three Lions" when fans hoped that their national team would win their first major title since the 1966 World Cup victory.
Great banter ahead of today's #ENGDEN game between @TheSun talking about bringing home the bacon and Danish @btdk referencing a distant past. pic.twitter.com/gZtyW63mKA
The infectious song, with its chorus "It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming, football's coming home", was written by pop star Ian Broadie and comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner ahead of England's hosting of Euro '96.
Denmark and Leicester City goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel was asked at a news conference on Tuesday about what it would mean for the Danish team to "stop it coming home."
"Has it ever been home? I don't know, have you ever won it?," Schmeichel replied while laughing.
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"To be honest, I have focused very little on the England national team. It doesn't really mean anything to me," he added.
"It's what it would do for our country back home, the joy it would bring for a country of only five and a half million to be able to do something like that."
Denmark were last in a semi-final of a major tournament in 1992, when Schmeichel's father, Peter Schmeichel, led the country to a surprise win of the tournament.
Reuters